Larry Wall wrote:
On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 07:32:58AM +0300, Alexey Trofimenko wrote:
: ah, I forget, how could I do qx'echo $VAR' in Perl6? something like : qx:noparse 'echo $VAR' ?
I think we need two more adverbs that add the special features of qx and qw,
so that you could write that:
q:x/echo $VAR/
where ordinary qx/$cmd/ is short for
qq:x/$cmd/
I think I'd like that much better if we consider execution and word-splitting to be the primary operations, and interpolation and noninterpolation the adverbial modifiers then the other way around, making that qx:q/echo $VAR/ or qx:qq/$cmd/. OTOH, I expect backticks to be rare enough that I wouldn't mind writing
use Spawn 'spawn'; spawn :capture :wait ($cmd); spawn :capture :wait ('echo $VAR');
Much more clear, saves ` for other things, and allows for easy specification of the many adverbs of spawn (weather it returns the return status, the PID/FH set object, or output, if it waits right there, or runs in the background (and makes the return value lazy), if it replaces the current process (exec)...
I'd quite like that. Although I think spawn should be a builtin rather than in a module, if it was in the core, and we were getting rid of backticks.
Although I'm masochistic enough that I don't mind the idea of always having to do execution with qx//, qx:q// or qx:qq// (running with other suggestions, I'd guess that would be non-interpolating execution, then the same again more explicitly, then interpolating execution) but I do like the idea of spawn.
Kind of removes the idea of pulling in the output of other programs as a fundamental part of the language though, for that it's nice to have an executing, capturing quote. Perhaps an adverb to qx that makes it behave like system() - I don't think it'd be a good idea to provide one that makes it behave like exec(), although perhaps other people do.
qx:r/$cmd/ qx:s/$cmd/ # both of these give back return codes? Which one!
But then
qx:r:qq// might be messy.
Or even
qx:exitcode:interpolate//
Ouch.
This isn't very coherent, I'm just thinking out loud based on what other people have said that I like.
But there are some things that would be completely ambiguous:
%hash<foo><bar>
Bracketing operator.
%hash<foo><baz()
Very long bracket operator, which quite likely has a syntax error directly after it.
But might not have... there's a chance that could slip through, and I don't like that for some reason.
: or maybe even we could see consistant to go after +<< +>> and alike, and : make old < and > written as +< and +> (and then lt and gt suddenly could : become ~< and ~> :)
I think people would rise up and slay us if we did that. We're already getting sufficiently risen up and slain over Perl 6.
Could be worse. They could rise from the grave and eat us!
Who says they won't?
Well, yes, but sometimes the weights change over time, so it doesn't hurt (much) to reevaluate occasionally. But in this case, I think I still prefer to attach the "exotic" characters to the exotic behaviors, and leave the angles with their customary uses.
...of which they have plenty already. Backtick has exactly one, and not an often-used one at that... I'm fine with axing it. Of course, there are a lot more people in the world then just me.
I'm fine with it too. I use it a fair bit but I think it's important to have a very clear mark where you're going to an external program
