I often use the logical operators && || and or as stand-ins for if (){};. Their short-circuit behavior is a handy idiom for conditionals.

I sometimes struggle with how to pronounce them. I always say 'and' and 'or' to myself and I know what I mean. How can they be said to others?

In English, 'do{} or die' is correctly understood by everyone. This extends to most ..or die; constructions in perl. The trouble is that it's the 'die' part that is recognised. The logical structure is swamped by the cliche.

A m// && print; sequence is second nature to perl programmers. What do you say when you read it out loud to nonperlers? To sugarcoat plain "match and print", I've used:

  1. "match forces print"
  2. "match means print"
  3. "match induces print"
  4. "match implies print"
None of those are very natural.

When the predicate is just a flag, it's helpful to make it a gerund or noun ( $production || $debugging && print;), but what verbs make the meaning of that clear in spoken language?

I wonder whether other languages provide more precision in these matters, too

After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Spoken Perl: and || && or what? by Zaxo

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