($perl{characteristics} eq 'unique') ? $perl{charm}++ : $perl{charm}+=
+0;
[download]

Perhaps they feel that their languages won't compete well with other languages that use dots. Perhaps they want to extend the reach of their languages into the ranks of the VB macro/spreadsheet community.

xoxo,
Andy
--
<megaphone> Throw down the gun and tiara and come out of the float! </megaphone>

Yeah, I don't like the dot. Here's why:

When I first started with Perl, I had only used the dot occassionally in C and Javascript. When it came time to learn Perl's arrow, it was relatively easy: whereas a dot suggests termination, both as period and (US) decimal, the arrow suggests action, i.e. $object->does_something. This is the basic reason I hate the dot. Essentially, it throws off the natural-language written text parser in my head, in a way that is diametrically opposed to its normal use. (Is there any modern written human language out there that does not use the period as the default mark for terminating utterances? Has anyone involved with human-computer interaction/usability testing ever examined the usability of the semantics assigned to semicolons, brackets and other "line noise" ascii in different computer languages? Besides the ongoing sniping over white space vs. brackets?)

But now, thanks to Java, VB, and other languages, the dot is the Dominant Programming Convention, and we, the valiant hold-out programmers who know better, are doomed. Doomed! Doomed, I say! Or should that be

$we = $I.say("Doomed!" x3);
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Damian assured me that the Grand Poobah's mind is set, and our fate is sealed. And he cajoled me that it wouldn't be so bad, getting used to using dots instead of arrows; that he had been against it, tried it, and after a while it was no big deal. He convinced me, reluctantly, because ultimately that line of code above isn't so bad. He also gave me this really yummy blue pill.

Plus, I wouldn't call this "cargo cult programming". That's about propagating ignorance. This seems to me to be a matter of a concession to convention, when the convention's hold reaches a critical mass and when the convention is suboptimal but not abhorrent. And I definitely wouldn't go that far.

Anyway, I'm actually much more concerned about =~ vs ~= right now. Dot vs. arrow is a nuisance, but that's potentially lethal, and at the least I hope it's dealt with intelligently by perl6's warnings.

-- Frag.

I wouldn't call this "cargo cult programming"

The point of the original poster wasn't that the dot was cargo cult programming, but that it encouraged people to cut 'n' paste VB code into Perl programs, because there was no translation of the -> to a .

xoxo,
Andy
--
<megaphone> Throw down the gun and tiara and come out of the float! </megaphone>

I belive the real source of the problem is the lack of non-alphanumeric symbols in ASCII. We all know Wall was pretty meticulous picking right symbols. So how on earth did he arrive at "." for concatenation? As you say, "." is pretty universal for "stop". Personally, I think "." and "->" both suck for different reasons. It's a choice between a lesser of two evils and there ain't much you can do about it.

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot Bishop";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;
Click here if you love Perl Monks

Not to be pedantic, but where I come from (c++) -> *is* the standard way to call functions that live inside an object that you have a pointer to, which is pretty much the only way I ever use it in perl too. (blessed ref to an object)

'The fickle fascination of and Everlasting God' - Billy Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins

Several of the differences between Perl5 and Perl6 are intended to reduce the amount of dereferencing you have to do. So I like thinking of this syntax change as just being Yet Another way of indicating to people that you are supposed to be thinking in terms of more immediate data structures and less about having a reference that you dereference.

YMMV, but that is true to the usage of both . and -> in C.

Well I'm glad somebody pointed this out.

It isn't to emulate Java, VB or SmallTalk so much as to make the code cleaner and easier to parse. Admittedly I'm attached to the existing arrow operator but I can get used to using a dot instead.

There are more important battles to fight. That's such a minor one.

Changing to suit the whims of the greater programming community is wrong, but standing firm on small issues is inflexible. I like the -> operator, I think it's neat, but I guess it's time for it to go.

And this is Perl. We've been promised a backwards compatibility layer, so your code isn't going to become obselete over night.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

What's also interesting is to see a tool become politicized which follows into my line of thinking that everything is political. If you're not on a deserted island, you will never escape the world of politics.

My point: none. Just wanted to share my observations. (OK, OK, my hidden political agenda is that I wouldn't mind picking up some XP! :)

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot Bishop";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;
Click here if you love Perl Monks

As I said, I really don't care one way or the other what Perl6 does, though I'd rather see a syntax that would be less confusing (and some of the changes in Perl6 will help there).

I suspect that I'll have trouble with confusing ~= and =~ (especially because Smalltalk uses ~= for "not equal"). If I'm still using Perl by the time Perl6 comes out.

I just thought it was curious that people thought that the copy/paste thing was important enough that they'd let it influence language syntax.

I have Win32 System Administration background. I was told by someone I deeply respected, that I should learn Perl if I wanted to be a "real sys admin" (curiously he didn't mention the OS...too easy a target, I guess). There are quite a few tools out there that use VB and VBScript for NT Admins. I laughed at people who used VB because, well, it was BASIC (yeah, just a tad naive).

However, quite a few books and people use VB for examples on how to script NT administration tasks. One of these books is ADSI ASP Programmer's Reference(1998,wrox, Steven Hahn). I wanted to know more about ADSI and this book had lots of info, even with it being VB-centric. I figured I could port it to Win32::OLE. I was wrong. I didn't want to learn VB so I could learn how to do it in Perl. So this book doesn't even have the spine cracked, because I found other Perl modules aside from OLE to keep me busy.

I'm very embarrassed to say that I had no idea that . meant -> until it was brought up in the Perl6 discussions. I guess I can go back, break open that book, and translate the . to ->.
If Perl6 uses the . syntax, it might make it easier for people like me to read and learn from other code. Even if it is VB.

That understanding will help you, but there will be other differences. For instance, this.that = 2 in VB would be $this->{that} = 2 in Perl. But something like a method call would be this->DoSomething.

Using Win32::OLE isn't as straightforward as you might want it to be. The biggest things to look out for is that when you're setting properties, you're going to be using a hash, and there are other times when you're going to be using lists. For example..

This is some DB code that uses ADO..

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Win32::OLE;

my $strCon = "Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source=XXXXX; Initial Catalog=SM
+S; "
    . "User ID=XXXXX; Password=XXXXX";
    
my $strSql = "SELECT System_DATA.Name0, datediff(dd, LastUpdateDate, g
+etdate())" 
    . " 'age' FROM SoftwareInventoryStatus INNER JOIN System_DATA on "
     . "System_Data.MachineID = SoftwareInventoryStatus.ClientID WHERE
+ "
     . "(datediff(dd, LastUpdateDate, getdate()) > 30)" ;
    
my $objCon = new Win32::OLE("ADODB.Connection");
my $objRecordset = new Win32::OLE("ADODB.Recordset");

$objCon->{'ConnectionString'} = $strCon;
$objCon->Open;

$objRecordset->Open($strSql, $objCon);

while (not $objRecordset->{'EOF'}) {
    print $objRecordset->{'Name0'}{'Value'}, "\t";
    print $objRecordset->{'age'}{'Value'}, "\n";
    $objRecordset->MoveNext;
}

$objRecordset->Close;
$objCon->Close;
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and someting similar in VB (sorry, this below is from some ASP a customer asked me to put together. Above is something I use. They don't perform the same task, but you should be able to see what mirrors what.

Option Explicit
Dim objConnection, objRecordset, strSQL, Name

Set objConnection = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
objConnection.ConnectionString  = "Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source=XXXX
+; Initial Catalog=SMS; User ID=XXXX; Password=XXXX"
objConnection.Open

Set objRecordset = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
strSQL = "SELECT Name0, MachineID FROM System_DATA WHERE  MachineID >=
+ 0 ORDER BY Name0"
objRecordset.Open strSQL, objConnection
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and what was a little confusing to figure out is that in VB, You can refrence the "Name0" field as objRecordset("Name0") but in Perl it's $objRecordset->{'Name0'}{'Value'} I personally prefer Perl, but with things like Win32::OLE it's a lot of poke and hope to figure out just how you have to access properties and methods.

That being said, I'd much rather use . than ->. Why? It's soooo much easier to type. I mean, really... reach all the way up to the hyphen, then all the way down (and holding shift) for the greaterthan (don't know the real name). Maybe I'm a weak typist, but it annoys the hell outa me.

Just my $.02.

--Psi
print(pack("h*","e4f64702566756e60236c6f637560247f602265696e676021602075627c602861636b65627e2")."\n");

for the greaterthan (don't know the real name)

The offical ISO name is indeed "GREATER-THAN SIGN".

The Jargon File lists the following common names, in rough order of popularity:

< > 
Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle bracket; l/
+r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read from/write to; suck/blow; 
+comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from UNIX); tic/tac; [ang
+le/right angle].
[download]

In INTERCAL, it's called the "right angle".

—John

Okay, I just couldn't resist this...

This is old, but still cute enough to amuse me:

A poll conducted among poets had established "waka" as the proper
pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters < and >, though some
poets held out for "norkies."
  
The text of the poem follows:
<>!*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~#4
&[]../
|{,, SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.
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So, I've called < and > "waka" ever since (to the confusion/amusement of all around me) :-)

Russ
Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl

$obj a b c(d,e) f
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$obj->a->b->c(d,e)->f
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$obj.a.b.c(d,e).f
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One Perlish issue (that frag brought up) in respect to Perl5 method call syntax is that an arrow has the semantic meaning of action. In the case of $foo->bar;, $foo is performing the action bar. I think that using the dot for method calls will lead to a less semanticly meaningful model.

Of course, with this issue, there comes the question of how valuable or important is it to have similar constructs across different languages? Does it add or detract from a given language?

I'm from a strong C/++ background, and find no issue with doing object->method() et al -- let's face it, most C++ code, you only ever have pointers to objects if you want to do anything non trivial.

Regarding the digression on using . for string concatination, I believe through the mists of my memory that at some point duing my studies at Essex University that it comes from some branch of mathematics (which is essentially where all programming originates). I forget which branch and also whether this is just my memory eludin me -- If I remember, I shall check my notes this evening.

--
RatArsed