A problem I see with this is that it's hard for the compiler to know what's a "useless" assignment -- especially with a language as extensible as perl. For example, what if the variable is tied? An assignment that looks useless may do quite a bit. Of course, you could tell the compiler "optimize it away unless it's tied" but there may be other examples where it's hard/impossible to tell. Although I doubt anyone uses perl for embedded work, this sort of thing is definitely an issue for C where a variable might really be a hardware register so an assignment isn't useless at all and is probably necessary. Can anyone think of a perl example other than a tied variable?

In reply to Re: Will Perl 6 optimize away useless assignments? by RhetTbull
in thread Will Perl 6 optimize away useless assignments? by princepawn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.