On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 11:06:17PM -0600, Rod Adams wrote:
: Since the line between rules and subs is already blurring significantly,
: I want to blur it a little more. I want to write rules which can take
: parameters.
No problem. That's how the arguments to rules like <before foo> are
already passed. If I recall, we originally specified three basic forms:
<foo bar> # bar is pattern
<foo: bar> # bar is string
<foo(bar)> # bar is Perl expression
though the middle one of those is the weakest, since it's equivalent to
<foo('bar')>
For that matter, the first one is just
<foo(/bar/)>
Anyway, these forms are somewhat negotiable yet. In recognition that
these are all methods underneath, I seem to recall switching the most
generic form to
<.foo()>
at some point, but I could be hallucinating. We could certaintly just
get by with
<foo pattern>
and
<.foo(@arguments)>
But I kind of like the sub syntax even if they're really methods underneath.
I dunno...
Of course, one can call them like ordinary methods too, as long as one
supplies an appropriate pattern-matching context invocant. But it's
pretty handy to have that magically supplied for you inside <...>.
Larry
