Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 03:27:29PM -0500, Casey West wrote:
>> So you're suggesting that we fake lexical scoping? That sounds more
>> icky than sticking to true lexical scoping. A block dictates scope,
>> not before and not after. I don't see ickyness about making that
>> so.
>
> Perl5 already fakes lexical scoping all over the place. A lot of that
> fakery can be removed from the language, yes, but in the case of block
> conditions it seems that DWIMery should win over orthoginality.
But that kind of DWIMery makes it really hard to extend perl's syntax
in any meaningful ways. You end up having to write your own parser
virtually, and parsers are really hard to write because there's so
many exceptions to rules. If we have a more orthogonal language to
begin with it's going to be far easier to extend it in whatever
direction we need for a particular problem space.
And once you have something whose syntax is easy to extend, you can
always introduce your own non-orthogonality and DWIMery, but this time
you can make it do what you really mean.
--
Piers
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
-- Jane Austen?
