It also seems to me that 'scalar' gives the wrong impression compared to
arrays. A scalar in a vector is a component of a vector.
I was thinking of "generic".
Hence "$variable" is a generic variable because it can hold any type of
content.
On Friday, June 09, 2017 02:10 PM, Gabor Szabo wrote:
Looking at https://docs.perl6.org/language/variables there are 4
variable types with sigil: $, @, %, &.
In Perl 5 I used to call them scalar, array, hash, and function
respectively, even if the scalar variable had a reference to an array
in it.
How do you call them in Perl 6?
As I understand @ always holds an array (@.^name is always Array or
some Array[type]). Similarly % always holds a hash and & is always a
function or a method.
So calling them array, hash, and function sounds good.
However I am not sure what to call the variables with a $ sigil?
Should they be called "scalars"? Wouldn't that case confusion as there
is also a container-type called Scalar.
The word "scalar" appears twice in the document describing the
variables: https://docs.perl6.org/language/variables and a total of
135 in the whole doc including the 5to6 documents and the document
describing the Scalar type.
The document describing the Scalar type:
https://docs.perl6.org/type/Scalar the term "$-sigiled variable" is
used which seems to be a bit long for general use.
So I wonder how do *you* call them?
Gabor
