At 10:29 AM 8/7/00 -0700, Nathan Wiger wrote:
> > With the proliferation of special subroutine names (BEGIN, END, INIT,
> > CHECK, etc.) the all capital subroutine names available to the
> > programmer has steadily shrunk. Rather than stealing subroutines from
> > the programmer, we should create a space just for Perl.
> >
> > sub *BEGIN {
> > # do compile-time stuff
> > # Perl-special
> > }
>
>I think this is a very valid point, but I don't think a special
>character should be chewed up for this. In particular, I really don't
>see typeglobs going away (they do some things you can't do otherwise).
>Besides, subs already have a magic character - the word "sub".
>
>Maybe just a convention like a leading underscore or two + CAPS?
>
> sub _TIESCALAR {}
> sub _FETCH {}
> sub _STORE {}
> sub _DESTROY {}
If you're going to use a convention, rather than a syntax, then the current
convention of all CAPS reserved to Perl is easier to understand, more
pleasing to the eye, and backwards compatible.
--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies
