I agree. This is a change made for the sake of consistency. I'm not a big fan of the underscore, but I can see the point. Overloading '+', like Java does in its String class wouldn't work -- not with magical DWIM scalars. (No snide remarks about Java's consistency here, either :).

The dot operator isn't just for OO -- it'll be used to access properties and attributes as well. Sure, you could argue that it's syntactic sugar for lvalue subs, but I like sugar, in measured doses. It'll be used commonly, and one character is shorter than two. It'll probably be easier to read, too, because the dot is small.

I'll personally have a bit of trouble with the sigils becoming part of the variable name, instead of indicating what to expect. Then again, consider how many new programmers make context errors like @array[1] = localtime;.

It's change, yeah, but it's not for the sake of change. It's for the sake of consistency, Perlishness in general, and the principle that Perl should Just Make Sense. I'll miss the dot concatenation operator, but I'm willing to spend the 30 seconds it takes to learn a few new operators. In the long run, this is a good change.

In reply to Re: Re: Perl6 headaches? by chromatic
in thread Perl6 headaches? by mattg

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