Nathan Wiger wrote:
>
> We're getting deluged with RFC's and emails. We should start thinking
> "will this RFC or idea *add value* to Perl 6?". If not, and it just
> makes something work differently, it _might_ not be worth an RFC.
I disagree completely. For one thing, there's no such thing as Perl6. It
doesn't exist. What does exist is Perl5, and the primary motivation here
should be to clean up and streamline Perl5. Mainly, removing the special
cases, bad syntax, and backwards-compatibility swamps that make it so
difficult to continue improving it.
We are NOT here to construct a radically better language. We are here to
design the underpinnings of one. If you have an idea that will "add
value" to Perl6 but can just as well be done after the groundwork for
the language has been laid out, then please do not write up an RFC on
it. It'll just distract. If you have an idea that will help unify
disparate mechanisms, or one that will require syntactic or
infrastructural changes, then please DO submit an RFC. Otherwise, Perl6
from its inception will prevent your idea from being realized. It's
always too late for backwards compatibility breakage with an existing
language, and there's a limited time window before Perl6 exists.
Removing =~ and making m// behave like a sub qualifies -- an
incompatible change could easily prevent this from happening. Even
moreso for \&m-abc-, not that I'm in love with that idea. This would
even free up =~, though it's so ugly I'm not sure why anyone would want
it. Maybe let it be a user-defined equality test, to take inspiration
from your comment about approximate equality? Dunno, but killing off two
unintuitive punctuation characters seems worthwhile by itself.
