So then, to get back to the invocant... I can't say that I liked many of the proposals. The one that seemed to have merit though was $^. I'd propose the following.
meth foo { $_.meth; # defaults to the invocant .meth; # operates on $_ which defaults to the invocant $^.meth; # is the invocant $^1.meth; # is the first invocant $^2.meth; # is the second invocant
I'm starting to get confused at the "need" for all these special variables. I vote that we steal from prior art in numerous other languages and just auto-set $SELF or $THIS or whatever and call it done.
Having .method assume $SELF is an added nicety, but if it introduces added parsing problems then it's hardly worth it.
OR, choose $^ and don't set $SELF (or $?SELF or whatever), but having dup short and long names is a waste, since people will always chose the short one (who uses English in Perl 5, really?)
-Nate
