Rob Kinyon wrote:
On 10/20/05, Nate Wiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
And, it shares alot with other languages people know and use.
That's more because languages are incestuous (like Perl) instead of
languages independently arriving at the same conclusions. Yes, the
"while" loop is going to look the same everywhere. But, the fact that
everyone uses $1 to mean the first match has nothing to do with
whether or not that's a good idea. The first engine did so, which
means the next one probably will.
Of course - but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It makes Perl more
accessible and learnable - and easier to switch between (it is not the
only language for many programmers).
$1 is a prime example. $0 means the program name (all scopes). $1 is the
first match. It's been that way for a very, very, very long time, and
it works just great. There is no *compelling* reason to change this,
other than to satisfy a few people that think it "should be different".
Right now the design is going towards something that's very very
un-Perlish from a syntax standpoint. Sure, the philosophy's there, but
there are fewer and fewer things Perl 6 shares with Perl 5 (or other
widely-used languages).
I wholeheartedly disagree. You can take any piece of P5 code and, with
very few modifications, have it run as native P6 code.
I think it depends on what type of code you have. Maybe for your code
this is true, but my view appears a bit different.
Frankly, most of the features in P6 look to be usable by 1% of the
Perl developers, and then only about 1% of the time. Most of my P6 is
going to be very vanilla. I'll take advantage of most of the new list
operators and thoroughly abuse the class/role system, but I'm not
going to be writing my own grammars or deal with $0/$1/etc.
Unfortunately many people WILL have to deal with such changes, and
the question should be: Does a given change offer a clear improvement?
As you said, if we're helping %1 of people %1 of the time, are the
other 99% really going to change all their scripts? No chance.
Anyways, don't misread me as a complete naysayer. But I'm lazy and
impatient, and am concerned the transition to Perl 6 is not going to
suit me. :-)
-Nate
