Larry wrote: > I'm trying to remember why it was that we didn't always make the first > argument of any sub the topic by default. I think it had to do with > the assumption that a bare block should not work with a copy of $_ from > the outside.
I dug through the archives. We were considering allowing dynamic scoping of $_ across subroutine calls (for backward compatibility with p5), so we delayed any final call on whether subs topicalize their first argument. We've pretty much resolved the first: such an abuse of lexical scope should be explicitly marked. For consistency, I think the first argument of subs should be the topic by default. Allison
