On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 11:36:17PM +0000, Simon Cozens wrote: : [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael G Schwern) writes: : > If you want a tactile grasp of the "Everything is an object" concept, try : > some Ruby. : : If you want a tactile grasp of Perl 6, try some Ruby. But I'll be saying : a lot more on that later... : : > A flip through the Ruby builtin methods is nice for building up some envy. :) : > http://www.rubycentral.com/book/builtins.html : : I vaguely object to calling them builtins, as I've objected to similar : concepts in Perl 6. They aren't *built in* to the language - you could : add another method and the parser wouldn't give a damn - they are : methods of the standard libraries that ship with Ruby. This : distinction is important, despite what Damian would have you believe.
Foul! I suspect this is a fight over definitions, not beliefs. Damian is usually pretty much on the mark with his beliefs. : In the same way, the specification of C-as-a-language, its syntax and : operators and the stuff that makes it look, act and feel like C, is : agnostic of the C standard library. (Even though "ANSI C" specifies : both, they are seperable.) This seperability is something I'd like : to see thought about a lot more in Perl 6. : : > There's lots of reasons to use an operator or built-in instead of a method, : > but remember to make the consideration first. Don't go grammar happy. : : Yes, yes, yes. This is what I've been trying to say for a while. Don't get discouraged--I've been saying it for a good long time now, and people still don't hear it, regardless of which side they're on... About the only things that have to be truly built-in to Perl 6 are lambda and the regex engine. Everything else is negotiable. (I'm counting method dispatch under "lambda", of course... :-) Larry
