On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 03:36:29PM -0600, Nathan Torkington wrote: > Abigail writes: > > I don't really like the change. What else could a variable '$array' > > be, than a reference to an anonymous array? The sigil *does* carry > > information - just like Larry intended it. > > Are you worried about "wasting" three letters in a piece of code in a > document to help people? I think the code is better for having the > longer name, is no harder to read, and will be more easily understood > by beginners.
I'd like to second this and go further: When writing documentation for beginners, it's best to minimize the number of new concepts they have to assimilate in any one section, be it a paragraph of prose or a code example. Perl doesn't enforce style, so we have more freedom to mess with the reader's head than we realise. When trying to explain basic Perl concepts, I've found it is helpful to eschew idiomatic contractions, shortcuts, or magic and spell everything out so that there are no distractions. "Never use $_ where $arrayref is clearer" is a good rule of thumb. I can quite understand Abigail finding this tiresome. But Abigail is not J. Random Newbie. Maybe we ought to think about finding some newbies and performing some documentation usability testing on them? -- Charlie
