> >the idea of a "dereference operator" dumbfounds lots
> >of folks. "What's an object got to do with a reference, much less a
> >pointer?" A p5 object is very confusing to others for this reason, and so
> >is the syntax.
>
> So you want a method invocation syntax that doesn't remind people of
> references. OK. But why does it have to be the dot? It is already taken.
> Sorry. Use an operator that doesn't exist yet in Perl. For example, old
> style VB used "!" to connect objects and their properties:
>
> $object!method("foo", "bar");
It doesn't have to be the dot. But the plain fact is that the dot is
generally recognized in this way; why is making Perl syntax more
recognized a bad thing? If what we're after is making Perl better, then
one of the primary improvements should be making objects more readable for
the multi-language programmer. I'm really not against '->', but then
again, I *like* that
an-object-is-a-reference-which-means-I-can-poke-and-prod-it-and-embed-it-etc.
Even so, I recognize that it doesn't make Perl more readable, especially
when glob syntax is used to manipulate the reference table.
A traditionally negating symbol ('!') is the last character I would want
to see. As for VB .... ;)
