Re: Different higher-order func notation? (was Re: RFC 23 (v1) Higher order functions)

[Nathan Wiger]

> There's two potential solutions here:
> 1- Use '_'
> 2- Use '^', but increase the strictness of sub calls
> 
> I'd be happy with both. I'm with Damian that '__' looks cool, but I
> understand that people typing in perl from a magazine (do people still do
> that?) might get confused (mmm... comfy fence I'm sitting on here...) and
> that '_identifier' is a well understood C idiom meaning something completely
> different.

I think these are both really important concerns. 

Remember, we're covering massively new waters with Perl 6, even just
with higher-order functions. There's going to be *lots* of articles and
courses on this. And we don't want people to accidentally type _ instead
of __ or get confused with C _identifiers. Frustrations like this lead
people to give up rather than discover how cool this stuff really is!
:-)
 
> The second suggestion specifically relies on us deciding that barewords are
> always evil, so that :
>   $a = foo;  # Error! Evil bareword! Return to firey depths of hell!

Naw, I like this. Let's not abandon it. I don't see how using ^ would
require this?

-Nate