Re^3: getting rid of special features

actually I don't wanna get rid of the feature but of the syntax.

Then we are (mostly) in violent agreement.

I still think that ++ being special-cased for strings is a rather harmless example, and there is another argument for keeping it: It's nicely symmetric with how ranges of strings work:

$ perl -wE 'say for "a".."e"'
a
b
c
d
e
[download]

which might be used a bit more often than direct increment on strings.

Now that we've already having this discussion, I'd like to point out some more Perl 5 features that could be reworked to much saner:

The flipflop (.. operator in scalar context) could have its own operator, making accidental usage of ranges in scalar context much less confusing
reverse should lose its magic dual functionality (list reversal vs. string reveral) depending on context. Perl 6 uses another function for string reversal (flip), but other approaches are possible too.
Whitespace is allowed between sigils and the name of the variable. There's no good reason to keep that.
Indirect method call syntax. (This one is hard to remove).
The control sequences for newish regex features are really obscure and hard to remember.

But in the long run, removing cruft is only a small part of evolving Perl 5. I firmly believe that in order to stay competitive, it needs a type system(*), proper subroutine signatures and a less bare-bones OO system in core.

(*) If the need for a type system isn't obvious to you, let me just tell you that at least 95% of all the character encoding trouble in Perl 5 could easily be avoided by having separate types for text strings and byte buffers.

Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed

Comment on Re^3: getting rid of special features Download Code

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Re^4: getting rid of special features by johngg (Canon) on Feb 17, 2013 at 18:26 UTC
`$ perl -wE 'say for "a".."e"' a b c d e` [download] It had never occurred to me before seeing a range in the context of this thread to try `$ perl -wE 'say for q{x} .. q{ac};' x y z aa ab ac` [download] Perl has me laughing out loud with amazement and delight sometimes :-) Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^5: getting rid of special features by soonix (Chancellor) on Feb 17, 2013 at 21:40 UTC
However, sort order is different from "range order"...	[reply]
Re^6: getting rid of special features by LanX (Saint) on Feb 18, 2013 at 00:28 UTC
> However, sort order is different from "range order"... So what? `DB<125> sort 1..12 => (1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)` [download] Lexicographic sort is always different! Cheers Rolf	[reply] [d/l]
Re^7: getting rid of special features by Anonymous Monk on Feb 18, 2013 at 00:31 UTC
Re^4: getting rid of special features by LanX (Saint) on Feb 17, 2013 at 20:06 UTC
> It's nicely symmetric with how ranges of strings work: yes and no! `DB<115> $a="aa"; print --$a -1` [download] that much about orthogonality in Perl. :( Cheers Rolf	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: getting rid of special features by moritz (Cardinal) on Feb 17, 2013 at 20:36 UTC
how is that not symmetric to how ranges of strings work? Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed	[reply]
Re^6: getting rid of special features by LanX (Saint) on Feb 17, 2013 at 20:55 UTC
I meant yes (ranges) and no (decrement) The symmetry between integers and strings is broken. Cheers Rolf	[reply]
Re^4: getting rid of special features by LanX (Saint) on Feb 17, 2013 at 20:15 UTC
> But in the long run, removing cruft is only a small part of evolving Perl 5. I firmly believe that in order to stay competitive, it needs a type system(*), proper subroutine signatures and a less bare-bones OO system in core. actually typing a scalar `my int $a` would make translating `$a++` very easy and giving another approach to solve this. Cheers Rolf	[reply] [d/l] [select]