>I'm still somewhat ambivalent about this, myself. My previous >experience with hyphens in identifiers is chiefly in languages that >don't generally have algebraic expressions, e.g. LISP, XML, so it will >take some getting used to in Perl. But at least in Perl's case the >subtraction conflict is mitigated by the fact that many subtraction >expressions will involve sigils; $x-$y can't possibly be a single >identifier.
People use nonadic functions (nonary operators? where non = 0, not 9) without parens, and get themselves into trouble for it. % perl -E 'say time-time' 0 % perl -E 'say time-do{sleep 3; time}' -3 % perl -E 'say time +5' 1218475824 % perl -E 'say time -5' 1218475817 % perl -E 'say time(-5)' syntax error at -e line 1, near "(-" Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors. Exit 19 --tom