opCaret to complement opDollar when specifying slices

[Dario Schiavon]

Hi,

I just read some old threads about opDollar and the wish to have 
it work for non zero-based arrays, arrays with gaps, associative 
arrays with non-numerical indices, and so on. It was suggested to 
define opDollar as the end of the array rather than the length 
(and perhaps rename opDollar to opEnd to reflect this 
interpretation), so that collection[someIndex .. $] would 
consistently refer to a slice from someIndex to the end of the 
collection (of course the keys must have a defined ordering for 
it to make sense).

I'm just thinking, if we want to generalize slices for those 
cases, shouldn't we have a symmetrical operator for the first 
element of the array? Since the $ sign was evidently chosen to 
parallel the regexp syntax, why don't we add ^ to refer to the 
first element? This way, collection[^ .. $] would slice the 
entire collection, just like collection[].

Until now, ^ is only used as a binary operator, so this addition 
shouldn't lead to ambiguous syntax. It surely wouldn't be used as 
often as the opDollar, so I understand if you oppose the idea, 
but it would at least make the language a little more "complete".