I'm afraid I can't agree. There are just so many cases where the sigils aren't enough to disambiguate clearly in people's brains. And references are the main cause of this. But also look at slices. Here's a hash slice: 
@foo{ qw(a b c) } = qw(x y z);

[download]
Now what does the @ have to do with the variable? The correct answer is absolutely nothing. The sigils in perl are used to denote the type of the operation, NOT the type of the variable. Because the slice above operates on a list it uses the @ to denote a list. But damn, is it ever confusing.

To take it further, you say ref($var) is enough, but how do you do that while coding? You can't - you can only run ref() at runtime. So sigils aren't serving their purpose there. Also now let's suppose ref($var) returns nothing, so what does $var->(); do? It possibly executes a function! But ref() told you nothing, and the $ told you nothing. (yes, I'm aware strict will catch that, but what if the purpose is to run a function? Then you have to have strict refs off for that section of code).

Now take it a step further. What about $var->{entry}. Most people these days are doing OO (aren't they?) so what does the $ tell us this time? Nothing, because the type of $var->{entry} is totally and utterly opaque to the naked eye.

Extreme example time. How do you do a hash slice of a hashref belonging to an object implemented as a blessed hashref? (did you parse that? It's hard to read, but it's even harder to figure out without severe experimentation how to do it). The solution is the totally inelegant: 

@{$var->{entry}}{qw(a b c)} = qw(x y z);

[download]
So now what part of the above defines the fact that it's a hashref? The answer is the openning curly bracket just before the first qw. Nope, sigils were pretty useless once again.

OK, rant over. Sigils really aren't all they're worked up to be. They have a purpose, which was fine for perl 4, but I think when perl 5 came along it all but made them useless.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Perl advocacy, CGI/ModPerl vs ASP/JSP by Matts
in thread Perl advocacy, CGI/ModPerl vs ASP/JSP by rinceWind

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