but I have not thought it constrained all the operations too.. what a complicated world they have with C

In Perl a variable is a concept - you can put whatever you want into it and Perl will try to do something suitable. In C a variable is a contract - you (and the compiler) must honor it and that includes forced conversions if necessary (and allowed). In a 'do what I mean' sense C is more complicated, in a 'what states do I need to consider' sense it is less complicated.

If I write a library function in C then I do not have to worry if my input variables may contain an integer, a float, an array, a hash, a reference, an object or whatever. Each variable can contain exactly one of these (unless I specifically do not want to care about it). This may be a boon or a burden. It depends.


(Actually you do not have to honor the contract. You can throw a tantrum, stomp with your feet and break it. But you should.)

In reply to Re^3: porting C code to Perl -- solved by Monk::Thomas
in thread porting C code to Perl by Discipulus

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