At 01:57 +0100 2003/02/04, Stéphane Payrard wrote:
>In the tradition of Perl concision, I would like newline to be a
>statement terminator everywhere it can: that is when
> a) the parser expects an operator
> _and_ b) we are not in the middle of a parenthesised expression.
>
IMO this would be terrible!
It would mean I could no longer write
%months =
{ jan => '01'
, feb => '02'
, mar => '03'
, apr => '04'
, may => '05'
, jun => '06'
, jul => '07'
, aug => '08'
, sep => '09'
, oct => '10'
, nov => '11'
, dec => '12'
};
nor could I write
; if ( $planetary_tour )
{ $bill
= visit_mercury('bring water')
+ visit_venus('just look')
+ ( $sick_of_politics
|| $sick_of_over_population
|| $sick_of_polution
)
? visit_earth()
: 0
+ visit_mars()
}
# marketing insisted we say this
; print <<MARKETING
The cost of your trip was $bill
Travel with us again soon
MARKETING
# engineering details
; sub visit_mercury
{ my @accessories = @_
; encase_ship_in_radiation_shields
or abort_trip
; verify_solar_weather_is_good
or abort_trip
; flyby_quickly
; return 12000000
}
# etc ....
__END__
(ie view separators as line starters (rather than line enders))
Which is strangely addictive
... One of it's virtues is that it is easy to tell where statements start
... they always start with a ';' or similar punctuation
The more I use it the more I am addicted to it
Yes the style is strange
... but it is neat that one can explore a wide range of styles in Perl
... one reason I don't use python is because it does not give me this freedom.
Regards,
Todd Olson
