Re: your points a and b, among the new features of interest to me, such as given/when, I think there was a real demand (beyond my own). Even our and state make sense, despite being alternatives to things already there. Also, while say is not of interest to me, I do think there was a real demand for it.

Re: your point c. Smart Match was not well thought out. It was too magical. Even last year there was much disagreement over a saner Smart Match.

given/when's down fall was being dependent on Smart Match. Otherwise, I like how it was designed. (FWIW, I never ran in to the problem cases that caused Smart Match to break, despite making good (implicit) use of it via given/when.)

Re: your point d. My understanding for use of the feature pragma is to avoid backwards compatibility problems. For me, it's rare I have to worry about. for example, our breaking a Perl program, but I am aware of the possibility. Perhaps the version form of use would be a better choice than feature, but at least a compile error on the use statement is (usually) clearer than one deep in the code.

In reply to Re^6: Experimental features: autoderef vs postfix deref by RonW
in thread Experimental features: autoderef vs postfix deref by stevieb

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