On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 06:01:57PM +0100, Jonathan E. Paton wrote:
> To make the symbols {} and [] aggregate you'd have to
> default [] to using hashes - and force it back to
> arrays using explicit syntax. You can't automagically
> decide that it's never going to be used like a hash.
>
> I'm I beating this point to death, or do I have to write
> the RPC:
>
> "Keep the {} and [] notation for hashes and arrays"
>
> or
>
> "Save our array!"
Whilst I agree with that, I'd also like to find an easy way to allow me to
say (OK, in perl5 terms, because I'll make a mistake in perl6 terms)
$foo->[$bar];
and after I've written my program decide to swap $foo from being an array
into some sort of sparse array, without needing to replace all those [] with
{} if my "sparse array" happens to be a hash.
Or am I still stuck in perl5, where the "obvious" way to do a sparse array
is a hash, because doing tied array implementation is both
a) non-lazy and needs patience
b) slower
while perl6 is going to have fast ways to switch $foo to all manner of array
implementations without needing to touch the perl code?
[Anyway, what do I know about programming in Perl? I seem to spend more
time programming perl. :-)
Comments are for wimps, Perl is for regression tests]
Nicholas Clark
--
Even better than the real thing: http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/
