On Wed 30 Oct, Larry Wall wrote: > An earlier message had something like this as a hyper: > > @a = @b[.method]; > > That absolutely won't work, because [.method] is a valid subscript. > In this case it would have to be written > > @a = @b[.]method; > > But the general problem is just about enough to kill the whole [] > idea for hyper. It's really only rescuable if we have a known set of > operators to match against. Then on the basis of the rule of matching > the longest token possible, we can have the hyper interpretation > override any interpretation as a subscript or anonymous array composer. > > For example, [undef] is a vector undef only if C<undef> is a member of > that distinguished set of operators.
The [] made it look appropriate, if the problem is ambiguity then perhaps the contents of the [] need a prefix to force hyper interpretation if it could be ambiguous. These are special, powerful cases and the clearer they are made the better - minimal huffman coding is not necessary. [+] - hyper meaning is clear [.method] - fix meaning as the subscript [*.method] - for some "*" forces hyper context, all it requires is another 60 mesages to undecide on what "*" should be. Richard -- Personal [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.waveney.org Telecoms [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.WaveneyConsulting.com Web services [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wavwebs.com Independent Telecomms Specialist, ATM expert, Web Analyst & Services
