Okay, rather than being patient enough to wait for all N Apocalypses, Exegesises (Exegei?), and/or Camel 4, I'm trying to understand them as they come out.

And I totally don't get the binary := operator.

Apocalypse 3 says of the binary := operator "it treats the left side as a set of formal arguments exactly as if they were in the declaration of a function, and binds a set of arguments on the right hand side as though they were being passed to a function."

Which I have to admit I just don't understand. Later it's treated as an alias. Exegesis 3 affirms this understanding: "Perl 6 provides a more direct mechanism for aliasing one variable to another in this way: the :="

Great. But aside from being able to shorten names I'm typing out (which I can do with references, and will be able to do more easily in Perl6 with auto-dereferencing), what benefit do I get? Sadly, the examples cited are either from languages I don't use, or refer to swapping arrays. (which I'm not sure I get: Can't I do (@a , @b) = (@b, @a) now that lists either are or are not flattened?)

What is the scope of an alias? How does (@a, @b) := (@b, @a) differ from (@a, @b) = (@a, @b)?

Am I not understanding what an alias is? How is $bound := %data{$key} different than $bound = \%data{$key}

Are the parameters to an alias (Or "bound variable" which I guess is more appropriate) evaluated at evaluation time? Would $bound := %data{$key} give me a different $bound as $key changed?

I'm sure this is a very powerful construct, but I really feel I'm missing something.

In reply to Comprehending Binary := by swiftone

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