in reply to Re: Thx, St. Larry, for the Beauty of Sigils
in thread Thx, St. Larry, for the Beauty of Sigils

The other problem is the frustrating learn curve of Perl, because we have a list form and a ref form of an array.

No, we have plain variables and references to variables (and functions). The distinction between plain and reference variables is well done IMHO.

But python is worse - it has list and tuple arrays 

qwurx [shmem] ~> python
Python 2.7.15+ (default, Nov 27 2018, 23:36:35) 
[GCC 7.3.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> foo = (1,2,3,4)
>>> bar = [1,2,3,4]
>>> type(foo)
<type 'tuple'>
>>> type(bar)
<type 'list'>
>>> bar[0] = 5
>>> foo[0] = 5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
>>> foo
(1, 2, 3, 4)
>>> bar
[5, 2, 3, 4]
>>>

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and it isn't obvious which is which by looking at the identifier. A tuple is inmutable, a list can be assigned to.
This was a major WTF moment for me.

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

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Re^3: Thx, St. Larry, for the Beauty of Sigils
by LanX (Saint) on Jul 27, 2019 at 14:28 UTC
    > No, we have plain variables and references to variables (and functions).

    I was using my own wording for the distinction.

    But sorry "plain variable" is blah.

    The fact that other languages do implicit dereferencation in their syntax doesn't make them less plain.

    $a, %a and @a are in fact containers for references, to allow such implicit dereferencation. °

    So how are containers "plain" now?

    But Perl is more explicit* here, which helps understanding what is really happening if you do an assignment a=b in another languages, where they sometimes copy the content or the reference.

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
    Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

    updates

    °) e.g. $a[0] is by definition (\@a)->[0]

    *) "Explicit is better than implicit" quote from Python blah

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      But sorry "plain variable" is blah.

      I was using my own wording for the distinction.

      perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
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        Ok so please explain "plain" in your own wording.

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
        Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

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