in reply to Re^7: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
in thread howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl

Sigils onerous? How about 'unnecessary'? Most languages don't need them. But more to the point, when's the last time you saw calculators using sigils.

As for how much complexity: 1 line: 

    if (/^\w/) { /^\w+=/ and $_='$'.$_ }

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Perl could go, *mostly*, sigil-free if it wanted and remain 100% compat w/previous progs.

I.e. it would still accept sigils, but for vars w/o sigils -- they would be allowed if predeclared and perl would use the predeclared type. If there was ever a case where more than 1 type was declared for 1 name, then a sigil would be required to differentiate them when using one of them. But in most cases where the same name isn't used w/multiple types, perl would already know the intended type as stated in the declaration.

Would likely reduce perl's "line noise" reputation and should be 100% compat w/old code (as old code has to have sigils in place, and when in place, then no predeclared-type-default would be used.

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Re^9: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
by hippo (Archbishop) on Aug 26, 2016 at 15:12 UTC
    Would likely reduce perl's "line noise" reputation

    You say that like it would be a good thing.

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      "You say that like it would be a good thing."

      I can't tell if you are intending 'irony' or not.

      Generally, line-noise is considered to be a bad thing as it impairs or prevents getting across the "signal" and hinders understanding the content.

      Usually, perl's "line noise" reputation is considered "bad" by those who use it to describe Perl code's look.

      A measure of language power is the ability to express, clearly, complex concepts in a minimum of space. One example within perl, now, is the general advice to eliminate superfluous parentheses.

      In regards to Perl code, if the type of a variable is already known, then it seems that adding a sigil would be redundant.

      Are you saying such redundancy is a good thing? If so, could you explain why?

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        Usually, perl's "line noise" reputation is considered "bad" by those who use it to describe Perl code's look.

        Precisely. The detractors look at Perl and the absolute worst thing to their minds that they can say about it is, "ooh, ooh, it looks like line noise". Well that's just fine by me.

        What do people say about Java? It's a massive resource hog. PHP? It's a security nightmare. Perl? Line noise. Quelle horreur.

        Even better than that this line noise reputation may well serve as a quality filter of sorts. Do we really want such people who are put off by a little complexity of syntax to be tangling with all the power that Perl provides? I think that they and us are both better served by them using other platforms.

        In short, I contend that Perl's "line noise reputation" (whether a valid criticism or not) is not inherently the bad thing which your previous post supposes.

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In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom