At 04:51 PM 8/15/00 -0400, John Porter wrote:
>Karl Glazebrook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >
> > This RFC proposes that C<$x>, C<@x>, and C<%x> be ditched and
> > replaced with C<$x> for everything.
> >
> > The only distinction left would be between things which are
> > variables (prefixed by C<$>) and not-variables (subroutines and
> > keywords).
>
>A useless distinction at the lexical level. Get rid of "$" too.
>x is a symbol; perl can look up what it means.
I think everyone's looking at this the wrong way. The target of a program's
source isn't the computer--no matter what syntax you come up with, we can
manage to parse it somehow.
The ultimate target of a program's source code is the *programmer*.
Programmers, being people (well, more or less... :), work best with symbols
and rich context. Stripping contextual clues out of code does the
programmer a disservice. We're at the point where we don't have to cater to
the limitations of the computer hardware. That means we'll be better off if
we cater to the limitations (and strengths!) of people's wetware.
Let's not move backwards and force people to work like machines. Instead,
lets force machines to work like us.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
