Re^2: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ?

I'm meditating about both. The general idea is to have an automatic duality of ref-types

You know the implementation side better than me, that's why I proposed different implementations/semantics.

The first version is a naive (but easy) implementation with the pitfall that both variables could later diverge.

To catch this a naive implementation would either need to make the ref $a readonly or use a tie to update \@a (here are dragons)

(I "think" a POC for testing could be implemented with Keyword::Simple)

The second version would be ideal, because diverging is ruled out. But I'm not sure if it's even possible to implement this in a performant way and what the repercussions would be.

An alternative syntax could be

mine $a = [1,2,3];
[download]

Of course all of this requires testing many use cases with POCs before going live.

FWIW:

Regarding the new keywords, in the long run I'd rather prefer a pragma changing my and our and signatures to act this way.

Legacy code would continue working and new code become much easier.

I doubt many people reuse the same symbol name in different sigil/types.

Style guides require arrays and hashes to have self describing names, so it would be obvious that $dictionary is the reference of %dictionary .

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)

see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

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Re^3: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by Anonymous Monk on May 12, 2026 at 21:04 UTC
I doubt many people reuse the same symbol name in different sigil/types. I do this all the time because if I have an array of @stuff and a hash of the same %stuff I think they should both be called stuff. If I need a variable about stuff I'll call that $stuff too. it's considered bad style to reuse the same symbol for different types Considered by who? if we want to pass an @arr to a function we need to explicitly reference it \@arr and inside the function we always need to explicitly dereference it. We don't need to do that at all, unless @INC is huge: `perl -le 'sub INC { print for @_ } INC(@INC)'` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by LanX (Saint) on May 12, 2026 at 22:59 UTC
> Considered by who? Various style guides, most prominently Perl Best Practices comes to mind where IIRC arrays need to have plural names, while scalars are singular. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]
Re^5: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by hippo (Archbishop) on May 13, 2026 at 09:16 UTC
`for my $sheep (@sheep) { $sheep->say ('Baa!') };` Which rule wins here? 🦛	[reply] [d/l]
Re^6: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by LanX (Saint) on May 13, 2026 at 12:22 UTC
Re^7: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by LanX (Saint) on May 13, 2026 at 13:36 UTC
Re^4: Implicit references? module -> feature -> pragma -> "Perl8" ? by Anonymous Monk on May 12, 2026 at 22:10 UTC
if we want to pass an @arr to a function we need to explicitly reference it \@arr and inside the function we always need to explicitly dereference it. Correct and sorry I misunderstood...	[reply]