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in reply to Re^2: Modules to reduce syntax?
in thread Modules to reduce syntax?

You can't get rid of the sigils $%@ in Perl, because of conflicts with barewords which have many other meanings and the many bultin commands which depend on sigils.

But this last example of aliasing a list-form and hashref-form \%hsh = $hsh could be simplified, such that the deref -> isn't needed anymore.

use Keyword::Simple to define a new command like e.g. var or let and any

var %hsh = LIST;

is translated to

my $hsh = \ my %hsh; %hsh = LIST;

This is not too hard to implement, because you don't need to parse LIST in advance (which could be arbitrary Perl code)

Like this explicit dereferencing with -> would be "simplified" away.

Demo:

DB<27> sub LIST { foo => { x => 42 } } DB<28> $bar ='x' DB<29> my $hsh = \ my %hsh; %hsh = LIST; \\ cont: say $hsh{foo}{$bar} 42

Of course that way you'd loose the ability to have $ident and %ident in different namespaces, but that's often considered bad style anyway.

And passing of hash-refs, like with function-parameters wouldn't be that easy without additional \ref-operation

sub func { var (\%hsh,\@arr) = @_; }

because otherwise var couldn't tell if a $scalar is meant to be aliased to a %hash or an @array

sub func { var ($hsh,$arr) = @_; # ??? }

tho you might be able simplify the syntax in many cases with

sub func { var \(%hsh,@arr) = @_; }

HTH! :)

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery