On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 12:03:35AM +0200, arcadi shehter wrote:
: some time in the past there was a talk about ... ?? ... :: ... operator being
: a combination of two binary : ?? and :: . But I dont know the ruling.
: If one factorize trinary ??:: to two binary operators,
: ?? could act a postfix topicalazer while :: becomes binary
: operator :
: $a :: $b evaluates to left or right argument according to true/false property of
the _current topic_
: something like infix:::($a,$b){ given CALLER::_ { when .true return $a ; return $b
} but it evaluate $b only
: if necessary.
By that argument, ordinary "if" should topicalize, and I don't think
we should be confusing boolean evaluation with topicalization.
Conditionals are so often "smaller" than the current topic.
We shouldn't force topicalizing on what is essentially a bit. Usually
it's some minor aspect of the current topic that we're testing,
and narrowing the scope of the topic is not what the user will want
or expect.
Larry
