John Siracusa skribis 2005-06-18 20:16 (-0400): > On 6/18/05 7:54 PM, Juerd wrote: > > In Perl, @ has a VERY strong association with arrays, so except for > > specialised frameworks, I recommend against using it for other purposes. > The / character has very strong associations in nearly every programming > language with division.
That is true. But in nearly every single US household and business, the dollar sign has to do with money. We create our own uses for existing characters. Sometimes this is based on something that we can recognise from inside or outside Perl, but almost never is something avoided because it has another meaning in another context. Perl would not be possible if we'd let ourselves be limited by this. > In Perl it's also strongly associated with regexes, albeit in pairs. Regexes and other quotelike forms. qw/foo bar/ is very common use. $/ had nothing to do with regexes in Perl5 (in a way, it did have to do with division), but it will in Perl 6. Even though it's not in pairs. > In Unix and URLs, it's associated with file paths. Yes. And . in a file path means current working directory. That's about as close to current working invocant as one can get :) > At least @ is vaguely associated with method calls in one existing > programming language (Objective-C). I don't know objective C. > >> .>method() .>:method() > > I think > has just enough purposes, and that it should be left alone > > now. > > > gt > > => pair > > ==> pipe > > <> qw > > <<>> qw > > +>, ~> shift > > ->, <-> sub > I don't think there's any confusion between .>method() and the other uses. I think there is. There is little point in further arguing over this. > Also, in the context of Perl, >'s historic usage in as the method caller > thingie -> in Perl 5 and its Perl 6 usage as the sub thingie -> ties > to > method/function calls much more strongly than /. -> in Perl 6 not being related in any way (except spelling) to what -> used to do in Perl 5 makes this highly irrelevant. The unix shell and things resembling it will still be in use much fifteen years after today, Perl 5 will not. Perl 6 is much about not letting history get in the way of good things. Juerd -- http://convolution.nl/maak_juerd_blij.html http://convolution.nl/make_juerd_happy.html http://convolution.nl/gajigu_juerd_n.html
