On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 20:41:35 +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote: > On 5/14/07, John Macdonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Removing the sigil > > on a function call (it used to always be written &sub(args...)) > > did, I think, lead to the difficulty in perl5 where it became > > difficult to add new keyword operators to the language - because > > they could conflict with subroutine names in existing code. > > Actually I think I never understood this issue. > We claim that having the sigils saves us from stepping on our future > feet by making sure keywords of the language are always different > from any variable we might create. > > The fact that function don't need a sigil any more and it is even > AFAIK discouraged to be used makes *this* argument mute. > > Thought this thread might not be the best place to ask this > I'd be glad to read some explanation about this.
In Perl 6, the & sigil is used to distinguish between foo bar which calls bar and passes the return value to foo, and foo &bar which passes bar as a Code object to foo. -ryan (sorry, I deleted your message by mistake, I'm attempting to fake up a reply)