Re: String Literals, take 1

[Joseph Ryan]

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: Jonathan Scott Duff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

: Joseph Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Anyways, here's a first draft of the string documentation ...

I didn't see any mention of vstrings  (e.g. tokens of the form
v5.8.0.  I also got the impression from a response Larry made to one
of the emails in the thread on numbers that the leading v might be
optional)

Good point, I missed them; interestingly, I can't find a reference to
them in perl5's perlop.

Also, I didn't see mention of the string context coercer which though
it doesn't really have to do with literals, probably should have a
reference here somewhere.

I disagree, that should go in perlop. (Same with the concat operator, whatever that will be when that section is written)

> - Larry was never specific as to how hashes interpolate; anyone have
>   any ideas?

I'd think that hashes would interpolate as a list of
key,value,key,value,etc.

BTW, how do pairs interpolate?

A hash is a set of pairs, so pair interpolation needs to be defined before hash interpolation can. I like the way the RFC suggests that
hashes interpolate, given that $/ and $" are upgraded to perl6 terms.

> =pod
>
> =head1 Strings
>
> A string is a literal value that represents a sequence of characters.
> A string object is formed when a sequence of characters is enclosed in
> one of the quoting operators, of which there are 3 types:
> Interpolating, Non-Interpolating, and Here-Docs;

This classification doesn't make sense to me. Here-docs are just another
quoting operator which can be interpolating or non-interpolating..

Yes, thats true, but Here-Docs are so... different.  Different enough to
get their own section.  You are right that the sentance is unclear, however.

Also, the whole idea of "interpolation" probably needs to be
explained up front.  Maybe something like this:

        There are two types of quoting operators: interpolating and
        non-interpolating. In interpolating constructs, the value of a
        variable is substituted for the variable name within the string
        and certain characters have special meaning when preceded by a
        backslash (C<\>). In non-interpolating constructs, a variable
        name that appears within the string is used as-is. The simplest
        examples of these two types of quoting operators are strings
        delimited by double (interpolating) and single quotes
        (non-interpolating). For example:

		'The quick brown $animal'
		"The quick brown $animal"

        In the first string, perl will take each character literally and
        perform no special processing. In the second string, the value
        of the variable $animal is inserted within the string at that
        location. If $animal had had the value "fox", then the second
        string would have become "The quick brown fox".

	More on the various quoting operators below.

Sounds good to me, except that the backslash is special in single-quoted
strings too.  The only real non-interpolated construct is the single-
quoted Here-Doc.

> =head2 Non-Interpolating Constructs

oh, a minor nit here ... tackle the items in the order that you first
list them.  In your 3 type classification you mention interpolating
first then non-interpolating, so you should start off talking about
interpolating or switch the order in the list.

Woops. :)


Joseph F. Ryan.

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