Unicode operators [Was: Re: UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ, demos]

[Dan Kogai]

On Tuesday, Nov 5, 2002, at 04:58 Asia/Tokyo, Larry Wall wrote:
> It would be really funny to use cent ¢, pound £, or yen ¥ as a sigil, > though...

Which 'yen' ? I believe you already know \ (U+005c -> REVERSE SOLIDUS) is prited as a yen figure in most of Japanese platforms so yen is already everywhere :)

One big problem for introducing Unicode operator is that there are too many symbols that look the same but with different code points (Unicode consortium has so done to make its capitalist members happy so their proprietary symbols in their legacy codes are preserved). Therefore I object to the idea of making Unicode operator "standard", however advanced that particular operator would be. At the same time, things like "use (more) operators => taste;" is very welcome. i.e.

use operators => "smooth";
$hashref = ♀%hash # U+2640 FEMALE SIGN
$value = $hashref♂{key}; # U+2642 MALE SIGN

> People who believe slippery slope arguments should never go skiing.

I don't want perl6 to be as "tough" as skiing, though.

> On the other hand, even the useful slippery slopes have "beginner"
> slopes. I think one advantage of using Unicode for advanced features
> is that it *looks* scary. So in general we should try to keep the
> basic features in ASCII, and only use Unicode where there be dragons.

Heck. We already have source filters in perl5 and I'm pretty much sure someone will just invent yet another 'use operators => "ascii";' kind of stuff in perl6. I thought "use English" was already enough.

> It will certainly be possible to write APL in Perl, but if you do,
> you'll get what you deserve.

And even APL has j. Methinks the question is now whether you make APL out of j or j out of APL.

弾 the ♂ with Too Many Symbols to Deal With

P.S. Here is even wilder idea than Unicode operators. Why don't we just make perl6 XML-based and allow inline objects to be operators?

<perl>
$two = $one <operator src="plus.png"> $one;
</perl>

..... Yuck!