On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, I wrote:
> > why not simply extend pattern-matching in a similar way to substr, making it
> > an L-value, so that one gets
> >
> > $str ~ /[aeiou]+/ = "vowels($&)"
> >
> > or
> >
> > $str ~ /\d/ {hyper-symbol}= (0) x {size-of-LHS-array};
On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Larry Wall replied:
> Problem with that...the replacement argument has to be lazy, and currently
> the RHS of an assignment is actually evaluated before the left. You'd
> really need something more like
>
> $str =~ /\d/ = { 0 }
How about just
$str =~ /\d/ .= "0"
or
$str =~ /\d/ .= { 1 + $_ .& 7 }
in which using "." (apply) would force a fetch of the LHS in advance of
evaluating the RHS. And for global-replace we could use the vector/hyper
notation:
$str =~ /\d/ [.=] "0"
> However, I think readability suffers without a hint on the front what
> you're trying to do.
We don't in general have a "let" on the front of assignment statements; why
should this type of assignment be any different? (Do we want a "let" keyword?
Personally I don't think so, but what do others think?)
-Martin
--
How to build a Caspian Sea oil pipeline - step one: get elected president...
