On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 10:06:29PM -, Smylers wrote:
> More practically, the length of a list is never interesting: a list by
> definition must be hardcoded into the program so its length is known at
> compile time. Indeed it should be known by whoever typed it in!
Err, no. Eg in perl 5:
> > 2) (4, 1, 2) + 7 returns (9). This is C comma behavior, and I always
> >found it incredibly non-intuitive. I'd really like to get away
> >from this, even if it means that this expression is a fatal error
> >"Can't add scalar to list".
[...]
> Agreed, however, that (2) is icky. My
Michael Lazzaro wrote:
> So, IMO, the only reasonable answer is (3)... that a list in numeric
> context returns the length. Thus we have consistency between lists
> and arrays:
>
> (1,2,3) + 4 # --> (1,2,3).length + 4 --> 7 (list)
> [1,2,3] + 4 # --> [1,2,3].length + 4 --> 7
On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 08:47 AM, David Storrs wrote:
I can see five possible courses here:
1) We decide that my suggestion is a bad one and do nothing with it.
That's fine; I am not wedded to it, I just thought it was an
interesting idea that I wanted to raise.
2) (4, 1, 2) +
