Re: Ansi Perl

If I understand you properly, you are asking why we don't force people to write for($x=1;$x<=10;$x++){} and disallow for(1..10){}, or vice versa. Similarly, I think you want to force if($x==5){print $x} and disallow print $x if ($x==5) (or vice versa... If my assumptions are correct, then I think the answer is that this flies completely in the face of Perl's spirit...

--
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Comment on Re: Ansi Perl Select or Download Code

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Re^2: Ansi Perl by Anonymous Monk on Dec 23, 2004 at 15:22 UTC
No, I don't think the OP wants that, and I don't think any other person rooting for certification of Perl wants that. What they want is have a specification which says that "EXPR if CONDITION" is 1) legal, and 2) states what it means. There are benefits to having a specification constructed by a specifications body. The benefits gets bigger if there are more players. Perl, being a relative small language, with just one vendor (that is, just one entity that produces Perl) the benefits are smaller than for instance C, with millions of coders, and dozens of compilers. I don't know whether Perl would benefit from getting a standard. It depends on what your goals are, I suspect. If you want to get more people to program Perl, and have it being used in more companies, you want specification more than if you want to give more flexibility to the implementors.	[reply]

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Re^2: Ansi Perl
by Anonymous Monk on Dec 23, 2004 at 15:22 UTC

What they want is have a specification which says that "EXPR if CONDITION" is 1) legal, and 2) states what it means. There are benefits to having a specification constructed by a specifications body. The benefits gets bigger if there are more players. Perl, being a relative small language, with just one vendor (that is, just one entity that produces Perl) the benefits are smaller than for instance C, with millions of coders, and dozens of compilers.

I don't know whether Perl would benefit from getting a standard. It depends on what your goals are, I suspect. If you want to get more people to program Perl, and have it being used in more companies, you want specification more than if you want to give more flexibility to the implementors.

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