Re^2: Paul Graham on Great Hackers

Do you mean totally abstract out the concept of a file handle, and only handle files as "big strings" (as was suggested on the perl6 language list recently), or do you mean just implementing a file-handle as a scalar? You can do that already since perl 5.6:

open my $fh,"< file";
while (<$fh>) {
  # stuff
}
close $fh;
[download]

I agree that this should have been the default from the start, but the file-handle type is probably an artifact of staying compatible with perl 4 (which had no objects).

update: here's the discussion on perl6-language

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

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Re^3: Paul Graham on Great Hackers by Jaap (Curate) on Jul 29, 2004 at 13:20 UTC
I really mean handle files as big strings. Performace wise, these could be made equivalent: `while (<FH>) { } # or while (split(/\n/, $file_scalar_thing) { }` [download] And when `$file_scalar_thing` goes out of scope, it's saved (if changed).	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Paul Graham on Great Hackers by Joost (Canon) on Jul 29, 2004 at 13:36 UTC
I think the idea is fascinating, though I feel `for (split/\n/,$string) { }` [download] is not consice enough ;-). There's a whole thread about implementing this in perl 6 here. Incidentally, there's also talk about adding an encoding layer on strings, so you can handle strings as collections of bytes, unicode chars, uncode combined chars or lines (though the syntax escapes me at the moment) "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Paul Graham on Great Hackers by wolfger (Deacon) on Jul 29, 2004 at 16:41 UTC
I don't know about you, but I sure don't want every file I open to have changes saved when it goes out of scope. Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -- Buddha	[reply]

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -- Buddha