On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 11:17:38AM -0400, John Siracusa wrote:
> Hmmm...does anyone else remember when the suggestion that '.' continue to be
> used as the concat operator in Perl 6 was shouted down because it would
> require space on either side of it? It seems to me that we've come full
> circle with Mr. '_' here... :)
Not quite. With ' . ' as concatenation, things would be much more confusing:
$a . $b # stringifies $a and $b and concatenates them
$a.$b # treats $b as a method name and invokes it on $a
Urk! With the underscore, you have this instead:
$a _ $b # stringifies $a and $b and concatenates them
$a_$b # syntax error! (at least most of the time)
I'd say that's definitely an improvement. Even in some context where
adjacent terms were allowed (though I can't think of one outside double-quotish
interpolation at the moment) $a_$b should result in an error about
$a_ being undeclared - if you use strict. You do use strict, right? :)
Mark J. REED <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
