tchrist speaketh:
> Damian Conway
> > print {STDERR} "darn"
>
> Natha Wiger:
> > STDERR->print("darn")
> >
> >Same amount of typing.
>
> But those are actually significantly different from one
> another, but in a way you might not have considered (but
> ought to). Yours in my ear reads
>
> O mighty STDERR! I beseech thee to please print "darn".
>
> compared with
>
> Please print to STDERR some "darn" thing.
>
> I know Damian never inflected it this way, but I always find the
> leading object a bit (e)vocative. It's more natural to me in regular
> coding to put the verb first; call me Imperative. The verb (ie,
> the *action*) is almost always the most important thing there in
> the code--it's what's *happening*. That dative doodad is merely
> an interested party, and doesn't really seem to merit being placed
> in the initial position, that place that's most important in
> utterances because it grabs your attention before that attention
> is lost. If you think about it, this is hardly the only place where
> Perl allows you the freedom to put the most important thing up front
> where it will be most readily noticed.
Not every (natural) language does it that way; some place the most
important thing -last-. A Japanese Perl might want to say
"darn" STDERR print;
for instance (Japanese is a subject-object-verb language).
>
> --tom
--
Buddha Buck [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects." -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice
