On Fri, 18 May 2001, Nathan Wiger wrote:
> Maybe there are two different features being conflated here. First, we
> have "is", which is really for assigning permanent properties:
> my $PI is constant = '3.1415927';
> So, those make sense, and we'd want them to remain through assignment.
> However, the "true", "error", "false", etc, really are *temporary*
> conditions. Maybe we need a separate keyword - "as" - for this:
> return $zero as true;
> For stuff declared with this "as" keyword, it would last until next
> assignment or other value change. That is, these are value dependent and
> designed to pass extra information along. By definition, though, when
> the value changes we'll want these properties to change as well.
I think you may be onto something here, but I get nervous about
"as" and "is" being the chosen keywords...they are only one letter apart
and the cognitive difference between them is very small(*); I think it
would be very easy to mix them up.
Dave
* For an example of words that are only one letter apart but have a very
large cognitive difference, try "now" and "not."
