Me wrote:
>
> It was an informal finger-in-the-wind thing I sent to
> a perl beginners list. Nothing special, just a quick
> survey.
>
> http://www.self-reference.com/cgi-bin/perl6plurals.pl
>
> > I certainly do not see that many people on the
> > list agreeing with you.
>
> And that means I should be quiet? I hope not.
what I have written in the comments blank:
Suggestion:
retain complete perl5 syntax with the following
DWIM exceptions defined:
Accesses that would, in array context, currently amount
to a single-length slice, in an scalar context, become
that-value-but-true, for string and logic accesses, and
give a non-quietable (fatal, even?) warning on use in a
numeric (but not assignment for later use) context. That
takes care of
@containername[{key-expression}]
and
@containername{{key-expression}}
Also, redefine the wrong kind of brackets to
correct to the right kind of brackets instead
of autovivifying the other kind of container, when
the other kind of container does not exist already.
Which is pretty much exactly what got suggested later 5/14
Later, the first person objective pronoun intoned:
> Suggestion: deprecate {}.
>
> The benefit is saving {} for alternative/future perl use,
> and the fact that beginners prefer [] as the subscript
> parens for both arrays and hashes by a more than 2
> to 1 margin.
>
> One cost is that:
>
> $foo[$bar]
>
> would be syntactically ambiguous. The compiler
> would know enough to deal, but humans would not.
and "strict braces" would kill you if you use the wrong
one, instead of letting you slide
>
> Suggestion: deprecate both % and {}.
>
> Benefits are both of the above.
>
> Costs are numerous and deep.
how about "flexiblize" instead of "deprecate?"
how about keeping them but deprecate allowing by-number and by-name
to share the same glob?
--
David Nicol 816.235.1187 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
# die smiling;
