On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 09:20:56PM -0400, Damian Conway wrote:
: So what about:
:
: $foo[$i]
: $foo{$k}
:
: ???
Those would work.
: And would slices interpolate?
Yes. Slices are entirely determined by what's in the subscript.
: I can't say I'm keen on making {...} special in strings.
It had to grow on me a while too.
: I felt that the $(...) and @(...) were a much cleaner and more
: general solution.
Yeah, I felt that way too. But then I start looking at teaching people
the subtle difference between
${} $()
@{} @()
%{} %() ?
&{} &() ???
and realize that this is the only holdover from Perl 5 where we use
the sigil to indicate the internal context rather than the type of
the object expected. It's a danger sign that we have to keep repeating
ourselves (or not, as the case may be):
$($foo)
@(@foo)
$(@foo)
Plus it ignores the fact that we've already introduced single character
scalar context operators that make it trivial to coerce from list
context to scalar. If {...} supplies list context by default, most
intepolations are either the same length or shorter:
$($foo) {$foo}
@(@foo) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
$(@foo) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
It also encourages people be more specific about *which* scalar
context they're looking for. It fits in with the general trend in Perl 6
that the "default" context is list context if you don't know better.
Plus, as I mentioned, it cleans up the "$file.ext" mess, the
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" mess, and the "%08x" mess. That's three FAQs that
don't have to exist.
: The prospect of backslashing every opening brace in every interpolated string
: is not one I relish.
I'm just looking for what will be least confusing to the most
people here. We can certainly have other possible behaviors, but
something simple needs to be the default, and $() doesn't feel right
to me anymore.
Larry
