I find that, especially with complex data structures, the -> notation can clarify things by seperating my identifiers

I find this view rather bizarre. I think the balanced nature of subscript delimiters clarifies things pretty well as it is. To each his own, I suppose.

All of the examples you cite for complexity can be rewritten using less confusing notations.

This statement may be true, but your for loop example is not the same as mine. Looping on array indexes and array elements is not the same thing. Sometimes you need the index as well as the value it points to.

I'm not sure why you don't show that the curly braces can be left out during dereferencing

I generally use the braces for clarity. I suppose that's a bit of a contradiction over my earlier claim of trying to avoid visual noise, but there it is. You're probably right that I should have mentioned it, though. I just didn't think to do so.

That said, this whole conversation thread is kind of strange. Am I actually defending the use of plain data structures over references? What's the point? You can use references 100% of the time if you want, but I'll stick to the regular type of variables.

In reply to Re^6: Dynamic variables by revdiablo
in thread Dynamic variables by xspikx

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.