I'm not quite sure I follow how that would happen? I always thought that it was the compiler that dealt with the parsing and semantic analysis of direct and indirect object syntax. By the time your code is involved, it's just a method called with an object handle isn't it?

I only use the indirect syntax for class methods rather than instance methods. I like the distinction, but I'm not locked into to it.

I'm still unconvinced by the arguments against indirect object syntax. It seems that there are thousands of lines of perl written every day that use it with print and printf. The cavaeats are fairly clear and the solutions well documented.

Personally, I'd like to see it's problems addressed so that I could make more use of it. We have prefix/ infix/ postfix operators for numbers. Why not other objects?

I'd hate to have to write  3->-() for unary negation, or $n->predecrement(). And I can see many places where indirect object syntax could be used to great benefit. I don't use it (other than as outlined above) because of it's current limitations, but I think it would be a shame to see it's potential for clarity being thrown away. Maybe the parser could never be 'fixed' in this respect, and maybe there is a fundemental reason why it couldn't be made to work as well for the general case as it does for numbers. I don't have the experience with writing code parser to know, but instinctually, I'd like it if that were not the case.