On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 05:39:26PM -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
> I propose, for example, "intval" for IV and "floatval" for NV.
I reject. :) Larry has a neat little principle:
Common operations should be "Huffman coded". That is, frequently used
operators should be shorter than infrequently used ones. For how
often it's used, the C<scalar> operator of Perl 5 is too long, in
my estimation.
I think the same goes for type naming. You only have to understand what
"IV" means *once*, and then you can just type two letters all the time,
instead of the beautifully accurate and obviously easy to understand
integer_guaranteed_to_hold_a_pointer_t.
Seriously, I think you underestimate programmers; they can learn and remember
two letters. Now, sure, PV's confusing as hell. That's why we use "STRING".
There's got to be a tradeoff.
--
"I find that anthropomorphism really doesn't help me with a place full
of bugs." -- Megahal (trained on asr), 1998-11-06
