On 5/31/07, Darren Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Barring some better name, I highly recommend/propose renaming Hash to Dict.
And lets rename Perl to Python. This is just change for the sake of change.
snip
The term Dict (as a short form of "dictionary") is well understood by
general people and is the term used for associative arrays in some
other languages, so it is easy to learn, and easy to explain to
people in Learning Perl.
snip
Dict also makes it sound like you are talking about pornography. Of
course, hash makes it sound like you are talking about getting high.
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The term Dict is easier for new people to Perl, either new
programmers or visitors from other languages, to learn than Hash is.
It allows more self-documenting code where one is used. And writing
Learning Perl should be easier.
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Please provide the peer-reviewed study that proves this as it goes
against my experience.
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For Perl 5 people, it should be very easy to adapt, or for the most
part they may not notice any difference save for documentation
references.
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The Perl 5 people are already annoyed that . is changing to ~, sigils
are becoming invariant, etc. Why not change the name of one of the
data structures too? If we give them too many things to complain
about they won't be able to decide where to start!
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You also have equal huffmanization since the terms Hash and Dict are
both of the same length, and they are also equally easy to type.
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They may be the same number of characters, but I can type hash without
leaving the home row on QWERTY keyboards, I don't know about Dvorak.
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And aside from the 4 letter word, all the other details associated
with hashes, eg the % sigil and {} constructor, and parts named
keys,values,pairs,kv et al can/should remain the same as they are.
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Right, because dictionaries have keys and values not terms and
definitions. Of course, it all makes sense now.
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In fact, since many users of Perl don't refer to the data type by the
name Hash but rather just by % or {}, the change may not take from
their useability at all or they may not even notice that a change
occurred at all, so easy to adapt.
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Except of course those poor schmucks who foolishly wrote code like
if (ref $arg eq 'HASH') { ... }
