Re: RFC 73 (v1) All Perl core functions should return ob

[Chaim Frenkel]

>>>>> "NT" == Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

NT> Dan Sugalski writes:
>> Which sort of argues for localtime in a numeric scalar context to return 
>> epoch seconds, in a string scalar context to return a time string, and in a 
>> plain scalar context a hashref. (or mini-object, or tied thingamabob, or 
>> whatever) Of course, we're trying to kill $! which does that, which is a 
>> counter-argument...

NT> I'm nervous about these different contexts.  I thought scalar vs list
NT> was confusion enough.  Now we're talking about overloading even
NT> further?  We need to think VERY long and VERY hard about this before
NT> thinking it's a good thing.

Is it really confusing? Wouldn't it remove the problem of hash flattening?

        $scalar = func          == singular whatzit
        @array  = func          == plural whatzit
        %hash   = func          == dictionary whatzit

And if we could have some type of casting, err, context coercion
this might help make things clearer.

        scalar ( func )         == any singular whatzit
        integer( func )         == a number
        string ( func )         == a string
        array  ( func )
        hash   ( func )

Though that would take away some keywords.

<chaim>

-- 
Chaim Frenkel                                        Nonlinear Knowledge, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]                                               +1-718-236-0183