in reply to Perl allows you to change the definition of false to make it true. (And vice versa.)

Actually I can see useful applications for this.

When trying to convert (and not just interpret) other languages like LISP or JS to Perl one of the biggest problems are implicit typeconversions at edgecases.

(Thoroughly catching all those edgecases slows such conversions ridiculously down!)

For instance this way, one could try to patch booleans in a way that they stringify to "false" and "true" like in JS.

Thanks for showing! =)

Cheers Rolf

  • Comment on Re: Perl allows you to change the definition of false to make it true. (And vice versa.)

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Re^2: Perl allows you to change the definition of false to make it true. (And vice versa.)
by tobyink (Canon) on Dec 14, 2012 at 15:09 UTC

    This is what boolean does.

    perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'
[reply]
      > > ... For instance this way, one could try to patch booleans in a way that they stringify to "false" and "true" like in JS. ...

      > This is what boolean does.

      well, not yet:

      JS-Console 

      >>> true
 
true
 
>>> "stringification: " + (1==1)
 
"stringification: true"

      [download]

      use v5.10.0;
use boolean;
 
say true;
say "stringification:" . (1==1);

      [download]

      output: 

      /usr/bin/perl -w /tmp/boolean.pl 
1
stringification:1

      [download]

      but using dualvars could help.

      UPDATE:

      kind of 

      use Scalar::Util qw/dualvar/;
 
my $false = dualvar 0, "false";
my $true = dualvar 1, "true";
 
say $true;
say "stringification:" . $true;
say "numification: " . (0+$true);
 
say $false;
say "stringification: " . $false;
say "numification: " . (0+$false);

      [download]

      Cheers Rolf

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