On 2/8/06, Larry Wall wrote:
> From: Damian Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I've now been using C<say> (via Perl6::Say) for some time -- testing our
collective intuition on this -- and it turns out that b. isn't the least
surprising. At least, not to me. In fact, I am regularly (and annoyingly)
> re-surprised every time $\ overrides what I was sure was going to
be newline.
The question basically boils down to how you think about "say".
I guess I think of "say" as "print + \n" too... because that's how
everyone explains it. If we told everyone it meant "print + ORS", I
think it would be less surprising. Of course, I hardly ever set a
record separator, and I'm not sure what Damian was doing that led him
to want to set one and to use 'say' at the same time.
What's the difference between an ORS and a newline anyway? The
purpose of a newline is typically to provide a visual separation...
hm. Maybe we should take a step back: 'say' and ORS's are both a
kind of shortcut to save you from typing everything out explicitly in
every print statement.
What if 'print' never added anything to its output, and 'say' always
added the field and record separators? The default ORS should then
be \n. Instead of turning the separators on and off (as in P5), you
would switch between using 'print' and 'say'.
(You might also make an argument that the default OFS should be a
space or a tab, but I think OFS="" and ORS="\n" are probably what
most people want most of the time. That certainly fits my typical
uses of 'print' and 'say'.)
-David "say what?" Green
