On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 03:23:25PM -0000, Perl6 RFC Librarian wrote:
> Operator Overloading
> -------------------------------------------------
> PLUS Called in + context
> MINUS Called in - context
> TIMES Called in * context
> DIVIDED Called in / context
> MODULUS Called in % context
How about ye olde ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, and MOD?
> Others proposed an alternative set of names for these functions, such as
> "OP_*" and "OP_-". However, I strongly disagree with these names. First,
> they're not English words or phrases, so are bad for humans. Second,
> they're not legal \w+ names, which is something we should not circumvent
> with special cases. Third, they're not consistent with already-existing
> Perl functions like C<FETCH> and C<STORE>. Finally, there is actually a
> good amount of ambiguity. For example, does "OP_*" refer to a unary or
> binary * context? With the word "TIMES" there is no such ambiguity.
I agree. OP_*, etc. are very bad names.
> =head1 MIGRATION
>
> This introduces new functionality, however p52p6 would have to catch any
> subs defined with the names listed above and warn the user that this sub
> name is now reserved for Perl.
I continue to think that stealing names from the programmer is a bad
thing. That's what RFC59 is all about. If we're going to use allcaps
subroutines to mean something special to perl I think we should make
it an error for the programmer to use them. Or as RFC59 suggests,
make the perl-special subroutines *really* special so that users can't
accidently change the behaviour of their program by defining a
subroutine called CREATE (or whatever).
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
