Re: Unifying invocant and topic naming syntax

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
ralph wrote: 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! You're confusing brevity of declaration with brevity of use. Declarations should always be relatively verbose. Why do you think your

Re: Primitive Vs Object types

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
Mark J. Reed wrote: Attributes are class-specific for a variable (okay, class instance specific, if you do Evil Things with multiple copies of a single base class in different legs of the inheritance tree and override the default behaviour of the engine) and not queryable at runtime without r

Re: Primitive Vs Object types

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
Luke Palmer wrote: Could you just look through the lexical scope of the object? for $this.MY.kv -> $k, $v { print "$k: $v\n" } Or would you look through the class's lexical scope and apply it to the object? for keys $this.class.MY { print "$_: $this.MY{$_}\n" }

Re: Superpositions and laziness

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
Nicholas Clark wrote: We're looking for a word that tersely expresses > has_no_side_effects_and_can_safely_have_its_results_cached_based_on_parameter_types_ > and_values_and_calling_context ? And to people in the perl5 know, Memoize is the module that implements this, hence why people who know

Re: Superpositions and laziness

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
Paul Johnson wrote: Part of the reason I would prefer something like "pure" over something like "cached" is because it describes the function rather than telling the compiler how to deal with it. That feels better to me. It's working at a higher level. Maybe the end result is the same, or mayb

Re: FMTWYENTK about := ( :-)

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
Arcadi wrote: this is not a description or definition of something. It is just set of questions and confusions that I have when I encounter words like "variable" , "name" , "alias", "assign" in perl . In the form of explanation. But actually these are questions . These are answers. In the form

Re: Superpositions and laziness

2002-11-11 Thread Michael Lazzaro
On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 02:19 AM, Damian Conway wrote: One of the reasons I like C is because it does specify exactly the way the subroutine is to behave (i.e. be called the first time, and not called every subsequent time the same arguments are supplied). So I can do nasty^H^H^H^H^Hh

Re: Unifying invocant and topic naming syntax

2002-11-11 Thread Me
> You're confusing brevity of declaration > with brevity of use. One needs sufficient brevity of both call and declaration syntax if the mechanism's brevity is to be of use in short scripts. > Making (limited) circumvention of [$_'s > lexicality] depend on a verbose and > explicit syntax will he

Re: Unifying invocant and topic naming syntax

2002-11-11 Thread Damian Conway
ralph wrote: > So what is driving you guys to deliberately avoid a brief def syntax? Can't speak for Larry. But what's driving me is the desire to balance conciseness with comprehensibility, and to keep the overall cognitive load manageable. If you're proposing that there be some special exe

Re: Unifying invocant and topic naming syntax

2002-11-11 Thread Me
> > method f ($self : $a) { ... } > > sub f ($a) is given ($line) { ... } > > > > what do you call $self > > The "invocant". > > > and $line? > > A lexical variable that happens to be > bound to the caller's topic. The "invokit" perhaps? > placeholders create subroutines, not method