Even fairly regular natural languages (Latin, for instance) tend to have large numbers of irregularities, tending to cluster around the most commonly used words/concepts.

English is, of course, a particularly non-standardized language, but it is, as the poster suggests, modeled after English. Specifically, the "default to '$_'/'@_'" functionality is modeled after default pronouns in English, and is certainly a key concern of this thread.

The "then perl isn't your forte" was kind of a cheap shot, though.

I'm not sure how non-orthogonal it is for a built-in to choose not to default to $_, especially given that most of the built-ins that do default are unary, to my knowledge.

for(split(" ","tsuJ rehtonA lreP rekcaH")){print reverse . " "}print "\b.\n";

In reply to Re^5: why does push not default to $_? by pobocks
in thread why does push not default to $_? by LanX

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