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All of the discussions above have their merits. However you can argue this til hell freezes over (that is if you believe in hell).

At issue is language (think API) design.

Some Asian languages have a different "character" to represent things - hence LOTS of characters.

Other languages use a small set of characters and build up words to represent things.

And some languages take words and slam them together to get new words to mean other things.

I like to think of things in terms of "common idioms" - not something I'm going to write up a whole function to do.

Generic programming is the further abstraction of things - pushing functionality and the data to be worked upon - out into parameter-land.

Where does one stop. It is up to the author and environmental drivers. There is no one-best answer - is that not the perl way? :)

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