I've updated Damian's Perl6::Variables module to treat %foo{bar} as %foo{bar()}
and to handle %foo<<bar>> and %foo<<bar baz>>. If this syntax is finalized, I'll
send Damian a patch.
This is at:
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/S/SW/SWALTERS/Perl6-Variables-0.02_001.tar.gz
http://slowass.net/~scott/Perl6-Variables-0.02_001.tar.gz
I'm eager to hear if %foo<<bar>> becomes permanent. Bug reports welcome.
I'm not supporting the utf-8 version of << >> because all of my software
handles them incorrectly in different ways but if there is enough demand, I might
accept a patch. (Just kidding, I will accept a patch).
-scott
PS:
The other thing I was threatening to write, hyper operators in P5 via overload
and hyper keyword, well, I couldn't quite get it to work in a useful way.
Couldn't figure out how to get real arrays out of an over loaded op, and from
what I know about P5, I don't think it is possible.
You can do whatever you like with this excpet time-shift it or view it on Linux.
On 0, Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 11:56:26AM -0700, John Williams wrote:
> : On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Larry Wall wrote:
> : > You subscript hashes with {...} historically, or these days, «...»,
> : > when you want constant subscripts. So what you're looking for is
> : > something like:
> : >
> : > if / <?foo> ... <?baz> ... { $?foo{'baz'} ... $?baz } .../
> : > or
> : > if / <?foo> ... <?baz> ... { $?foo«baz» ... $?baz } .../
> :
> : I'm probably a bit behind on current thinking, but did %hash{bareword}
> : lose the ability to assume the bareword is a constant string?
>
> It's thinking hard about doing that. :-)
>
> : And why «»? Last I heard that was the unicode version of qw(), which
> : returns an array. Using an array constructor as a hash subscriptor is
> : not a "least surprise" to me.
>
> We'd be trading that surprise for the surprise that %hash{shift} doesn't
> call C<shift>. Plus we get literal hash slices out of it for free.
> Plus it also works on pair syntax :foo«some literal words». And probably
> trait and property syntax as well.
>
> And basically because I decided :foo('bar') is too ugly for something
> that will get used as often as switches are on the unix command line.
> The %hash syntax is just a fallout of trying to be consistent with
> the pair notation. Once people start seeing :foo«bar» all over,
> they won't find %hash«bar» surprising at all, and will appreciate the
> self-documenting literalness of argument.
>
> And unfortunately it's an unavoidable part of my job description to
> decide how people should be surprised. :-)
>
> Larry
