Re: Arglist I/O [Was: Angle quotes and pointy brackets]

[Rod Adams]

Larry Wall wrote:
So you can say
   for =$*IN {...}
   for =$*ARGS {...}
   for =<foo.c> {...}
   for =<foo.c foo.h> {...}
   for =«$foo.c $foo.h» {...}
   for =['foo.c', 'foo.h'] {...}
   for =['.myrc', @*ARGS] {...}
   for [EMAIL PROTECTED] {...}
   for =<> {...}
 

The simplicity is nice, but the visual message is, well, icky.
It might be salvageable by having the ='s balance, yielding:
   for =$*IN= {...}
   for =$*ARGS= {...}
   for =<foo.c>= {...}
   for =<foo.c foo.h>= {...}
   for =«$foo.c $foo.h»= {...}
   for =['foo.c', 'foo.h']= {...}
   for =['.myrc', @*ARGS]= {...}
   for [EMAIL PROTECTED] {...}
   for =<>= {...}
That looks better. Might even make the trailing = mean something useful 
like "auto-chomp".


And I don't think it'll be visually confusing to people who put spaces
on both sides of their assignment operators.
 

But those of us who often use the horizontal ws to break up the terms on 
a line will moderately often not put spaces around our assignments and 
less thans.

Okay, this rant is more about the \s<\s than \s=\s. To me, it is easier 
to understand the grouping of line 1 than line 2 below:

if( $a<$b && $c<$d ) {...}
if( $a < $b && $c < $d ) {...}
In line2, my mind has to stop and ask: is that "($a < $b) && ($c < $d)", 
or "$a < ($b && $c) < $d". It quickly comes to the right answer, but the 
question never comes up in the first line. If I wanted to use more 
parens for clarity, I'd use LISP.

-- Rod Adams