In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Larry Wall) wrote:
>I'm still thinking A is the first one and Z is the last one. Someone
>talk me out of it quick.
Just think of all the trouble it would cause in the summaries:
'Meanwhile, in perl6-language, there was much discussion about Z.
Actually, most of the discussion was about Z, but there's no chance I'm
using the American pronunciation. I was born pronouncing it "Z", and
I'll die pronouncing it "Z", "Z" be damned.'
Besides, this is Perl, and there should be a classical solution, a
literary solution, a solution that makes other languages look on
uncomfortably because they can't quite decide whether it's too crazy for
words or whether they've been left in the dust once again.
The actual issue is how to distinguish cardinal numbers from ordinals,
right? So if we want ordinal numbers, why not use ordinals?
say "From the home office in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan:";
say @top_AZ_alternatives[1st .. 10th];
So the first element is 1st (or 1th), and the last is -1st. Or maybe 0th
is the first? No, that's silly, 1st should be first. 0th could be the
element before the first, and I suppose -0th means after the last. (If
you read from the 0th/-0th element of an array you presumably get undef,
and you could write to it to unshift/push.)
We already have ordinals for grammars, so I'm sure we could make 'em work
here. (Maybe "nth()" is an operator that constructs ordinal-objects?
(I kind of want a "th" suffix operator so I can do ($n)th. Although that
doesn't really lend itself to counting from the end, like the supposed
"-nth" operator, unless you can do something like "($n)th but backwards"
... eh, which may not be worth it.))
I actually found things I liked in pretty much all the suggested
alternatives, but none of them reached out and grabbed me by the throat
the way "nth" did. It just seems more Perlish.
- David "just reali[sz]ed that in England @floor[1st] is
the second, but is hoping nobody else notices" Green
