http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=394269

A couple of nights ago, I was thinking a little, about Perl, about programming in general, about operators (especially "and" and "or" (or their higher precedence brothers "&&" and "||")) and I thought I would like a "but" operator. I told that to my girlfriend.

Well, she's no programmer but she does understand a programmer's way of thinking and she has some understanding of boolean logic.

So I told her I would like a "but" operator. Then she said, "that wouldn't be quite usefull, because that would make you able to say (pseudocode)  not EXPR-THIS but EXPR-THAT or  EXPR-THAT but not EXPR-THIS and in that case, you could as well just say  EXPR-THAT."

Hmm, I thought. You are pretty right, actually. Then I discoverd that the importing mechanism does have something like a "but" operator (use MyModule qw(:standard !somesub)). But (<-- there it is) I didn't enjoy that one as much as a true "but" operator that would work a little like "and" and "or".

A long story made short: I (er... my girlfriend) concluded a "but" operator would be useless and I think it's a pity. I still like the abstract idea of having such a thing.

Whatever.




"2b"||!"2b";$$_="the question"
Besides that, my code is untested unless stated otherwise.
One more: please review the article about regular expressions (do's and don'ts) I'm working on.