Re: Angle quotes and pointy brackets

[Alexey Trofimenko]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:43:10 +0100, Juerd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Alexey Trofimenko skribis 2004-11-30  9:09 (+0300):
delimiters should have corresponding closing character, so it should be
something like
Please, stop seeing ` as a circumfix operator in this context. What you
do is like saying that after . you expect a capital letter. It's a
programming language, and the only definition useful is the language
itself, disregarding other languages, like Perl 5 and English.
In current Perl, :: is also known as '. And that's not a quoting
character in that context. In an early Apocalypse, Larry said not to
make the same "mistake" again because it would be hard to syntax-colour.
But that doesn't quite count, as matching for editors will have to be
rewritten anyway to support things like "$foo{"bar"}".
I have several editors even on windows, and not even specially written for  
perl, which do color ' as :: correctly. Personally, I liked that syntax,  
it has some similarities to Ireland surnames:) $O'Hara{Scarlett}

but it puts big restrictions on what can be part of the name (actually,  
thoose which match to <ident> only), so $package'$varname won't work.
I meant only that your ` can't be replacement to   because latter allows  
MUCH more freedom in key names. Actually, only space has special meaning  
here.

so, could you be more explicit, what rules your syntax have?
$a`$b+$c`$d, is it equivalent of
$a[$b+$c][$d] or
$a[$b]+$c[$d] ?
and I think, polymorphic treating of ` as either {} or [] adds some  
overhead.. and unstability of your code. Especially in cases like $a`$b,  
when compiler just can't see in compiler time, what could be contained in  
$b - number or string.
only one variant of that syntax looks for me useful:

  $var`Only`Ident`Compatible{$strings}`Here123
as replacement for
  $var{'Only'}{'Ident'}{'Compatible'}{$strings}{'Here123'}
so ` works here exactly as Java(ECMA)Script .
no spaces allowed, no expressions, and it is always a HASH subscript.
doesn't lua have that prefix `Quoting behavior already? ( 'text' eq `text  
) or it was some other language? If to mimic it, than
  $var`Only`Ident`Compatible{$strings}`Here123
could be automatiaclly transformed into
  $var'Only''Ident''Compatible'{$strings}'Here123'

Macro definition for it could be very simple, like
 macro postfix:Â`Â is parsed {<ident>} {return "'$0'"} or something like.
 %hash"key""anotherkey"[1]=0
 %hash'key''anotherkey'[1]=0
 :key"value"
 :key'value'

This is just making parens/curlies optional for more operators than
<<>>.
but :key'value' is the same as :key<<value>>.. distinction shown only on  
occasional spaces in ''.


   $var.<key1><key2>[1].<key3>  # yikes, but still better than <<>><<>>
Still hard to type. Simply put, repeated circumfix operators suck,
regardless of whether they are <>, <<>>, "", '', [], {}.
hm, I thought something like this long time ago, when I come to perl and  
some other languages from pascal, where you could address a 3dimensional  
array with a[1,2,3] instead of a[1][2][3]; but there was no problem at  
all, it's a matter of habit. now I consider latter more readable and  
flexible.