Well, everything's an object underneath if you scratch it, so whether $nonrefscalar.elems returns an error probably depends on how $nonrefscalar is "tied" as a container object, to use the Perl 5 term. In general it's probably an error for the default implementation of scalars. Possibly it should return an undef containing an unthrown exception. Either that, or it should always return 1. :-)

The parens are not necessary for an indirect object, which your colon forces it to be. Chances are it'll even work without the colon, because the syntactic function of the colon is to separate the indirect invocant from its arguments, and if there are no arguments, it's not ambiguous. It's only with arguments that the colon becomes obligatory.

Basically, the dispatch rules are defined such that, for argumentless methods, it doesn't matter whether you call them as methods or subroutines--you end up at the same place. So you don't have to care whether 

    close $handle;

[download]
is defined as a global, multi-dispatched subroutine or as a normal method on filehandles.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: Re^4: Perl6 syntax being too much complex? How we will teach and read that?! by TimToady
in thread Perl6 syntax being too much complex? How we will teach and read that?! by gmpassos

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