Dan Sugalski:
# At 7:30 AM +0000 1/24/03, Piers Cawley wrote:
# >In my quest to eliminate as many explicit conditionals from
# my code as
# >possible, I found myself wondering if Perl 6's multidispatch
# mechanism
# >would allow one to write:
#
# Okay, I think I remembered the problem. Assume the following:
#
# list bar(int); # bar takes an int, returns a list
# scalar bar(int); # bar takes an int, returns a scalar
#
# and also assume the following:
#
# xyzzy(scalar); # xyzzy takes a scalar
# xyzzy(list); # xyzzy takes a list
#
# and then we make the call:
#
# xyzzy(bar(1));
#
# Which bar do we call? And which xyzzy?
This is also a problem with using want().
If we don't provide wants_scalar/wants_list, someone will build it with
want(), so we might as well try to address it. I suggest that want()
return a special value when the calling context is ambiguous, and any
wants_scalar/wants_list property be designed to accommodate this
(probably by specifying which one should be the default).
--Brent Dax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
@roles=map {"Parrot $_"} qw(embedding regexen Configure)
>How do you "test" this 'God' to "prove" it is who it says it is?
"If you're God, you know exactly what it would take to convince me. Do
that."
--Marc Fleury on alt.atheism
