On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Janek Schleicher wrote: : Trey Harris wrote at Wed, 03 Jul 2002 19:44:45 +0200: : : > In a message dated Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Michael G Schwern writes: : >> Attributes : >> Transcending mere objects and classes, Perl 6 introduces adverbs. : > : > <confused> Attributes are adjectives, not adverbs. Aren't they? : : Attributes describe the behaviour of sub routines, I think. : As a sub routine is a Doing word - a verb, : I would say an attribute can be an adverb.
When a sub is declared, it's just an object, and so any properties you apply to it at that point really are functioning as adjectives. Perl 6 will support adverbs, but that's just a way to pass additional arguments to something like the range operator. It really does modify the operation, not the operator. And it's syntactically distinguished from adjectives. Admittedly the concepts mush together in many natural languages. But please don't continue to call the adjectives "attributes". They're "properties" now. We're reserving the term "attribute" for object instance variables. That is, attributes are formally defined per-class, whereas properties are defined per-object on an ad hoc basis. It will reduce confusion if we can keep those terms straight. It was a mistake to call what Perl 5 has "attributes", because that's a standard industry term for instance variables. Larry
