Hi,
- in natural languages, synonims are very often - alias is a synonim
Perl is modeled on natural languages, but that doesn't mean it is one.
At its core, Perl is a limited, artificial language being explicitly
designed with certain goals. One of those goals is that it should be
as small as possible given the feature set we want it to support; an
`alias` built-in that essentially duplicates an existing feature goes
against that goal.
I can agree with it, but I think it would be a great feature. And it
doesn't depends on Perl 6, but it depends on Parrot, as I think.
- in Perl 6, currently there's no way to create a reference to a
variable, _with the context of the variable_, too (binding just give
me possibility to bind a variable into another, but the new variable
won't be automatically have the same context, as the binded one)
I'm not sure what you mean by "context" here. Context has a very
specific meaning in Perl, representing the type a function's caller is
expecting; this doesn't seem to be what you're talking about here.
alias kilobytes, kilobyte;
This is a couple punctuation symbols short of:
&kilobytes := &kilobyte;
Or maybe:
&kilobytes ::= &kilobyte;
I'm not really sure what behavior you have in mind for alias.
"&kilobytes := &kilobyte;" will not work for you (try it), because you
have to declare the "variable" kilobytes - in the default strict mode.
But you can't say for ex. "my &kilobytes", if you want to export it. I
would like to copy if the subroutine/variable is local, or exported,
or... etc. Oh, I have the term: I would like to copy the _scope_ of it,
too. Forget the "context". Simple binding shouldn't have to copy the
scope, too.
Anyway, "alias" is a Ruby term, and if Parrot will be able to support
Ruby, then it will be able to support this function, too.
Bye,
Andras
