--- Thom Boyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Smylers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
>
> > And an alternative
> > spelling for the assignment operator[*0] doesn't strike me as
> something
> > Perl is really missing:
> >
> > $msg <~ 'Hello there';
> > $msg = 'Hello there';
>
>
> I still remember the first time I saw a computer program, before I
> had
> learned anything about programming myself. A friend showed me his
> first
> Fortran program, and it included the following line:
>
> N = N + 1
>
> I stared at that in puzzlement for a long minute, and then said "That
> sure
> isn't true for any value of N that *I* know of!" Then he told me that
> "="
> doesn't mean "equals" in Fortran (no, *that's* spelled "EQ" :-).
>
> I've always been bothered by this misuse of mathematical notation,
> which is
> used in an incredibly bewildering array of computer programming
> languages.
> On the other hand, I've never been a fan of the ":=" spelling of
> assignment,
> either. I always thought that "<-" was much better, except for the
> pitfall
> that humans are likely to misread "a<-5" as a comparison.
>
> One of the most... er, *interesting*, dodges I've seen in this area
> is the
> one used by Squeak (a Smalltalk variant). Squeak spells assignment
> with an
> underscore ("_"), but the Squeak system *draws* it as a left-pointing
> arrow.
> Hey, I know: let's not bother with Unicode...let's just reassign a
> few ASCII
> control characters for Perl's use! :-)
>
> I, for one, could live with "<~" as the only assignment operator. But
> I only
> suggest it tongue in cheek.
>
Hey! Don't make me come over there...
>
>
> Speaking of Squeak, I notice that Buddha Buck just posted a
> Smalltalk-translated-to-Perl implementation of the if-operator:
> > class True is Bool is singleton {
> >...
> > our True true is builtin;
> >etc.
>
> which even includes the notion that the implementation of True and
> False is
> immutable, so that the code generator has a ghost of a chance of
> knowing
> what to do!
>
> That was followed by Austin Hastings' post:
>
> > log $user onto $system.
> > log $message to $stderr.
> > l2x = log 2 * log $x; # Don't check my math, please. :-)
> > ...
> > sub log($n) { ... }
> > sub log _ onto($user; &_ ; $machine) { ... }
> > sub log _ to($message; &_ ; $stream) { ... }
>
> which is a recycling of Smalltalk's "inject:into:"-style operators. I
> have
> to admit that I *like* the idea of being able to define those
> kinds[1] of
> operators; they can really add to the clarity of the code. I just
> don't want
> to have to write the parser!
> [1] What *do* you call this style of operator -- intermingled-fix?
>
> Looks like we've got some Smalltalk fans here. What say we start a
> new
> mailing list for designing Perltalk? :-)
I can't even smell Spalltalk.
=Austin
