in reply to Re^8: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
in thread howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl

Would likely reduce perl's "line noise" reputation

You say that like it would be a good thing.

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Re^10: howto parse (or determining end) of a line of perl
by perl-diddler (Chaplain) on Aug 27, 2016 at 09:01 UTC
    "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?

[reply]
      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.

[reply]
        I would, without question, say it is not a good thing. I base my opinion in what is *readable* (would you find a book easier to read with sigils indicating grammar part (noun, verb, adjective...etc) in front of every word?

        Besides the hindrance to legibility, computer linguists and human-language linguists both agree that one of the key features of a powerful languages is conciseness.

        The ability to express your idea, understandably to your audience, in the minimum of 'quanta' (units of meaning/information), directly makes for a more powerful language than one that takes many auxiliary helpers and extra symbols to get an idea across.

        That is a widely agreed upon feature of a good language -- regardless of the participants.

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