Re: RFC: lexical variables made default

[Bart Lateur]

On Thu, 3 Aug 2000 10:48:17 -0400, John Porter wrote:

>OTOH, being fun (which I admit it is) is one of the reasons many
>people don't want to think Perl is a serious language.

I don't agree. The problem is somewhere else, namely the problem that
Ilya Z. brought up: the fact that there is no complete specification for
the language. The descriptions in perlfunc etc. are not 100% complete.
There are some features that are still not documented. Therefore, it is
not possible to mathematically prove that a largish program is correct.

The solutions brought up, namely a requirement of a formal specification
(à la BNF), or turning Perl into an ANSI language, are going a bit too
far. A BNF is a bit of a straightjacket, Perl won't fit in on one.

All I want, is a specification that covers 100% of all cases. It may
even be an informal one, as long as it is complete. That's "all".

-- 
        Bart.