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 $_='$'.$_ }
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.


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

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.