Re: RFC 110 (v3) counting matches

[Nathan Wiger]

Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> 
> I'll agree that /l is bad too.  But I think adding a new "list"
> keyword is also bad.  What about other contexts?  Are we going to have
> "scalar", "list", "hash", "boolean", "string", "number", etc.?  Not to
> mention (even though I am) user-defined contexts (my Dog $spot; $spot
> = gen_dog();  <-- that's a "Dog" context).

The interesting thing is that "scalar" and "list" are the only two that
can't be done completely implicitly without arbitrary edge case
decisions. Nobody wants to admit this, but it's true. Somebody once
posted a "proof" of this, but I'll have to dig...

And hashes are assembled just like lists anyways:

   %hash = list get_key_vals;
   %hash = (key, val, key2, val2);  # same thing

But no, I certainly wouldn't suggest going down the path of 1000
explicit contexts. Bad. Implicit context good! But a "list" helper
function like a "scalar" helper function would solve a lot of common
problems.

Not Perl 5? Probably. Not Perl 6? Don't buy it. Bad idea? Maybe.

-Nate