In a message dated: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 14:02:26 EST
Derek Martin said:
>Just because it's well documented doesn't mean it isn't cryptic. It
>is cryptic because it is a single letter which isn't mnemonic for
>anything intuitively obvious.
So, what you're saying is that it's cryptic until you read the docs
and understand it? How is that different than anything else which is
documented?
GDB has the 'print' command. How is that more intuitively obvious
for "evaluating an expression" than 'x'? To me 'print' means just
that, print something, not evaluate something, an certainly not "show
me the value of this variable". So why not 'x'? It seems just as
intuitive as anything else short of 'evaluate_this_expression foo'.
In short, your argument doesn't seem to make any sense. If it is
well documented, it doesn't matter if it's intuitive. Once you know
it, you know it. If you can't remember it, that's what the 'help'
command is for, which clearly states:
x|m expr Evals expr in list context,
dumps the result or lists methods.
If it's (well) documented[1], and you don't read the documentation, there's no
one to blame but yourself.
Footnotes:
----------
[1] Well documented means just that. Obviously, if the
documentation sucks, and you end up more confused after
reading the docs[2] than you started out, then that's the fault
of the doc/pkg maintainers and developers, which gives you
every right to bitch about it :)
[2] IMO, none of this applies to Perl, which is recognized by
others far more important than myself as having about the most
complete, comprehensive, and well written documentation of any
programming language ever!
--
Seeya,
Paul
--
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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