Apologies for raising the dead (horse) On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 03:27:51PM -0600, Me wrote: > Damian: > > ["it" will be passed to about 5% of subs, > > regardless of whether the context is your > > 10 line scripts or my large modules] > > If the syntax for passing "it" to a sub > remains as verbose as it currently is, > you are probably right that "it" won't > be used to achieve brevity! I think it's > a pity given that the core point of "it" > is to achieve brevity. > > Why do you think your estimate of Perl 6 > usage of "it" is so much lower than is > true for the standard Perl 5 functions?
If a subroutine explicitly needs access to its invocant's topic, what is so wrong with having an explicit read-write parameter in the argument list that the caller of the subroutine is expected to put $_ in? It makes it clear. If I understand all this correctly, as is, this "access caller's topic" is an unrestricted licence to commit action at a distance. Accessing the caller's topic is the default in perl5. And there is still a steady stream of bugs to p5p where core perl modules are doing something (typically a while loop) which tramples on $_, and so makes something go wrong in their caller. (possibly several levels down) (And for that matter the "obvious" solution of local ($_) in perl5 is also action at a distance if $_ is tied, as local is an immediate fetch and a store at end of scope. Special case local on $_ ?) Nicholas Clark -- perl6 better than perl (this week)? http://www.perl.org/advocacy/spoofathon/ [Alledgedly some judging activity soon. Yeah, right. Pull the other one]
