Re: RFC 76 (v1) Builtin: reduce

[Jeremy Howard]

Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2000 at 11:31:50AM -0500, Adam Krolnik wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Following the lead of the sort operator, it would be a little
> > simpler to see reduce expressions use $a and $b instead of
> > $_[0], $_[1].
> 
> The $a and $b of the sort comparator were A Bad Idea to begin with.
> There's nothing wrong with using the standard @_.  The $a and $b just
> introduce yet another special case, which among other things makes it
> very hard to warn about dubious uses of users' variables named $a or $b.
> (Yes, there is a small aesthetic edge in using $a vs $_[0], but I still
> consider the $ and $b to be warts.)
> 
And anyhow, this will work just fine (see RFC 23):

  $sum = reduce ^a + ^b, @numbers;