If you don't know that Perl has a list separator concept, the name $LIST_SEPARATOR leaves you to look everywhere for its meaning.

It's actually worse than that, because of what I referred to above as 'term overloading'. For example, Haskell has the concept of 'list separator', but the new book takes great care to point out that:

Commas are separators, not terminators

Some languages permit the last element in a list to be followed by an optional trailing comma before a closing bracket, but Haskell doesn't allow this.

It's a minor example, but shows that by using the english versions it may induce assumed understanding in the reader due to term overloaading.

The symbolic versions do not suffer from this. Someone encountering $" for the first time will not make the same assumptions and will have to look it up in the documentation. Which is a Good Thing.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Re^3: An Apology for Puncish by BrowserUk
in thread An Apology for Puncish by rir

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