On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Larry Wall wrote:
> : but I think the latter is unnatural enough that it deserves parens, so I'd
> : put 'but' above comma (and probably '='), but below just about everything
> : else.
>
> Could perhaps unify with C<..>. Wouldn't hurt for it to be
> non-associative like C<..>.
'Is' and 'but' return their left operand to allow chaining, so don't 'is'
and 'but' need to be left associative so the following will work?
0 but true but string('zero rows affected')
> I'd be more inclined to unify & and | with * and +, since that's
> exactly what they are in Boolean algebra, where 1*1 == 1. I think
> the argument that it breaks C compatibily is weak in this case,
> since almost everyone admits that C is broken in this respect.
Good point.
> Alternately, we take | and & away from bitwise ops and do something
> more useful with them. I have been asked privately by a sight
> impaired person to consider using | as the separator for parallel
> streams rather than the almost invisible ; character, for instance.
> Being a bit sight impaired myself at the moment, I have great empathy...
| and & do one thing different from + and *. They impose integer context
on their operands, rather that just numeric.
How about moving ** down to just above *? There's no precedence from C,
and -$a**2 is a bit counter-intuitive mathematically. I'm not sure
what the intuitive behavior should be for the other unary operators
though.
I can post a revised table if the associativity of 'but' is clarified.
~ John Williams
my $zen = true but false;
