So, what value do you see in advocating this model? In a phrase: Conceptual simplicity.
That's the obvious answer. But I was hoping for more of a demonstration of benefit in the answer.
Simplicity has positives and negatives, as well as various levels. On the simplest level, you can
think of perl having both scalar and list values, and describe what different operations do with
them. I think this encourages mistakes like $foo{bar} = (1,2,3); and @baz = [1,2,3];. The biggest reason I see for moving to a less simple (but still inaccurate!) model of "no such thing as a list in scalar context" is that I think it encourages more of an "operators provide context to their operands" pattern of thought that is the basis for really understanding what you are doing when you code perl. Of course, it would be great if everyone could shed even that level of simplicity, but that's asking a bit much.
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.
|