On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:59:50 +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> That said, I really *really* like the idea of embedded dashes
> in identifiers (not least because underscores offend my amateur
> typophile self), but the idea of being able to embed other
> operator-ish symbols in identifiers leaves me utterly cold. I
> strongly doubt that if they are put in, it'll cause the end of
> Perl 6, as you argue, but I also don't care at all about whether
> they are allowed. I'm not going to use them anyway.
Well that'll make *your* programs easy to read, at least :-)
My point is this: punctuation serves a valuable purpose that shouldn't be
diluted. It doesn't look like letters and digits ("oatmeal") and in Perl,
it means something different too. That correspondence is very valuable
for reading programs; that when one sees an asterisk, it means
multiplication or splat or a few other possibilities, but it isn't part of
an identifier. Identifiers form a large proportion (most?) of a program's
text, and being able to tell *quickly* where they begin and end is crucial
to reading code. Having to keep at the back of one's mind the possibility
that some symbols with other meanings are also overloaded with
identifier-ness seems to me such a large loss as to outweigh the gain from
permissiveness. Even if a program doesn't exercise that permission, the
possibility that it *might* introduces extra caution in reading code.
Even if subconsciously, even if measured in milliseconds, I contend that
is important.
Just because some other languages do it doesn't mean Perl should, unless
you know of some studies showing that readability hasn't been impaired.
I'm willing to be surprised.
--
Peter Scott
http://www.perlmedic.com/
http://www.perldebugged.com/
