Re: Arglist I/O [Was: Angle quotes and pointy brackets]

[Alexey Trofimenko]

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:03:03 -0600, Rod Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Larry Wall wrote:
   for =$*IN {...}
   for =$*ARGS {...}
   for =<foo.c> {...}
   for =<foo.c foo.h> {...}
   for =Â$foo.c $foo.h {...}
   for =['foo.c', 'foo.h'] {...}
   for =['.myrc', @*ARGS] {...}
   for [EMAIL PROTECTED] {...}
   for =<> {...}
The simplicity is nice, but the visual message is, well, icky.
It might be salvageable by having the ='s balance, yielding:
    for =$*IN= {...}
    for =$*ARGS= {...}
hm. we have short and strange <FH>, for input.. (and for some reason, it  
is bracketing! there's no sense at all in it)
..but we have long (and even looking slightly OOish, in perl5 sense) print  
FH for output, and noone complained. We still aint going to have funny  
syntax for output, and we not going to keep old syntax for input. Why to  
reintroduce even more strangeness with that unary =, which is actually a  
simple list operator, which doesn't desire for huffmanizing?
I don't think that would hurt anyone
    for lines <file1 file2 file3> {...}
      # or
    for files <file1 file2 file3> {...}
      # or
    for lines @*ARGS {...}
      # or just that special case:

    for lines {...}
but actually everybody just miss that short and strange
    while (<>) {...}
and how all other handles would be accessed is much less concern.
it's just a bad and beloved habit, IMHO.
maybe we could make a special case.. (C programmers would be shocked)
    for () {...}