Thomas Sandlaà writes:
> HaloO Luke,
>
> you wrote:
> > if $a \ $b == 3 {...}
> > *If A nor B is 3 ...
>
> What does the * in front of the if mean? Not?
"Ungrammatical"
> With "grammar reason" I meant the formal grammar of Perl6 not the one
> of natural english. Are you aware of such reasons?
Ahh. Using \ as an infix operator doesn't conflict with the grammar of
Perl 6. It's perfectly feasable in that regard.
> >In English it's more like:
> >
> > if \ $a \ $b == 3 {...}
> > If neither A nor B is three ...
>
> I'm not a native english/american speaker but I think it's pretty much
> the same as the German "weder ... noch ..." for "neither ... nor ..."
> and "entweder ... oder ..." for the "either ... or ..." of xor. Also
> the plural/singular usage is the same. So I fully agree with you, that
> xor and nor have the same feature/burden as infix ops.
>
> But since xor, ^ and ^^ are in the language already,
See, I'm trying to change that. The former and probably the latter can
stay, but I'm convinced that the operator form of ^ doesn't huffmanly
belong, even if it does mnemonically.
> BTW, there also was a thread about ',' and 'then'. There people
> complained about the missing 'and' in front of it.
Yeah, and it got rejected, too. People complain about a lot of things.
That's why I'm here: to comfort people out of their complaints, and to
replace them with my own. :-)
> >I definitely like the symmetry. But we have to remember that the P in
> >Perl (can) stand for Practical. The advantages of having syntactic
> >symmetry are nice, and they aid learning. But they aren't nearly as
> >important as semantic symmetry/consistency. (Not to say that they
> >aren't important)
>
> The lack of infix ops to go with the none junction has worried others
> before me. Unfortunately I don't find the thread were Larry rambles
> about this. The only thing I found was Damian disliking ! and !!.
>
> Of course I wouldn't ask for a nand infix op for two reasons:
> 1) there's no corresponding junction
> 2) what should be the high precedence version?
And 3) who the hell would use it?
>
>
> >We have a surplus of semantic ideas, and a shortage of characters on the
> >keyboard. Adding seldom-used (and in this case, confusing) operators in
> >the face of consistency is a Maxwellian thing, but I don't think it's
> >hiding any deep truth behind it this time.
>
> Well, not depth but notational convenience for small to medium sized
> junctions. Do you see chances to get that through? Or is the design
> more or less finished?
Well, the design is more or less finished in that we have enough
information that the language can be implemented completely. The design
is not finished because it keeps changing.
I never consider the design to be finished (even after it's
implemented). I just assign it an ever-thickening viscosity. If we
wish to make sweeping changes that will change the langauge for the
better, now is the time to do it, because it only gets harder as time
progresses.
Luke
