Mark Reed skribis 2005-05-02 16:13 (-0400):
> Holy matter of opinion, Batman. Œ<Œ and Œ>¹ are much easier to tell apart
> than Œr¹ and Œw¹;
Obviously we disagree.
What are the characters around the code supposed to be, by the way? Your
mailer tells my mailer that you're sending iso-8859-1, but I seriously
doubt that.
> Œr¹ and Œw¹ make me stop and think about how you spell Œread¹ and Œwrite¹,
> whereas Œ<Œ and Œ>¹ make instant visual sense, which should be appreciated
> by GUI users of all people.
Good, now see:
my $fooh = open 'foo', '<';
my $barh = open 'bar', '>';
my $fooh = open 'foo', :r;
my $barh = open 'bar', :w;
Or, funnier:
><><>><<>
<
>
<
>
>
<
<
>
or the equivalent:
wrwrwwrrw
r
w
r
w
w
r
r
w
or another equivalent, which in my opinion is clearer than any of the
alternatives:
my $fooh = open 'foo', :read;
my $barh = open 'bar', :write;
write read write read write write read read write
read
write
read
write
write
read
read
write
I really do find it hard to believe that you find < and > visually more
distinctive than r and w. And is read-write <> in \W-ish? I read that as
!= or <ARGV>.
But of course, I also find it hard to believe someone's actually using
Microsoft software to send something to a geek mailinglist. ;)
> Left-to-right is hardly a mnemonic; you¹re writing in a language which
> parses left to right, because it was created by English-speakers, and
> English is written left to right.
It is indeed hardly a mnemonic. Hence my use of quotes around that word.
There is nothing on the left side of my computer or screen that
indicates reading, or anything on the right side that indicates writing.
Worse, if you write
open '/etc/passwd', '<';
that visually parses as "to /etc/passwd", because that's where the
"arrow" is pointing. But does swapping the arguments make sense? It's
in that order in Perl 5, but in Perl 6, I think we shouldn't want a
text-justification like spreading of arguments over parameters, or to
make the mode argument mandatory.
> And since when is Perl targeting GUI users? It¹s a PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE doesn't translate to LANGUAGE USED BY PEOPLE WHO
ALL USE COMMAND LINE UTILITIES ALL THE TIME. In fact, many people use
graphical IDEs and don't like the command line. They don't magically
associate < with reading and > with writing. If there's any association
at all, my guess is that it has to do with comparison or angle brackets.
Juerd
--
http://convolution.nl/maak_juerd_blij.html
http://convolution.nl/make_juerd_happy.html
http://convolution.nl/gajigu_juerd_n.html
