On 11/23/05, Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> : I'm also puzzled that you feel the need to write 0..$n-1 so often; there
> : are so many alternatives to fenceposting in P5 that I almost never write
> : an expression like that, so why is it cropping up that much in P6?
>
> Couple reasons occur to me offhand. First we're doing away with $#foo.
> Second is all the array sizing in P5 is implicit, whereas S9 style
> arrays are all about explicit array sizing, and 0..$n-1 comes up all
> the time there. But I also am liking the generalization of unary ^
> to mean domain.
What about @array.indices instead? Then, there's no possible
fenceposting, your code is self-documenting, and we're not introducing
another unary operator?
> And in an axiomatic sort of way, it corresponds to those theories
> of math that build up the integers by counting set elements. The
> "argument" that produces 5 is 0..4. And it works out that +^5 == 5.
So, +^5 is the way to generate the Church number for 5 through the use
of an iterator masquerading as a range?
> But the generalization to hashes is even cooler because I can say
>
> my %thishash{^%thathash};
>
> or some such to duplicate the "shape" regardless of the typology
> of %thathash.
my %thishash{%thathash.keys};
Much easier to read. The methods are there for a reason. Don't re-add
operators where there's a perfectly good method. Plus, overwriting
methods is much easier to grok for the average programmer than the
corresponding operator, unless you're aliasing the operator, in which
case I have problems figuring out why this is good, unless we're
deliberately designing P6 for the obfu/golf crowd.
