Hi, Somehow the current file test syntax, 'filename' ~~ :e, looks like a not well-though-out translation of Perl 5's syntax, -e 'filename'.
Apart from totally feeling wrong to me, there are a few points I can put my finger on: 1) $file ~~ :s returns a number, although smartmatching usually returns a Bool 2) As currently designed, $str ~~ :e will always be True. That's because '$x ~~ $y' where $y is Pair is defined as $x."$y.key()" ~~ $y.value. :e is short for :e(Bool::True), and smart-matching against True is always True. D'oh. There might be a way to fix that, but that fact that nobody noticed that so far only strengthens my opinion that this is not very well thought-out so far. 3) I haven't look too closely at the list of proposed Perl 6 file test operators, but Perl 5 has 29 of them. The idea of having 29 single letter methods in class Str doesn't make me all that happy. So I collected other ideas, both in my brain and in #perl6. Some of them are: $str.f.exists # Str.f returns an "interpret this object $str.f.size # as a file name" object $str.File.e # same, different names $str.stat.exists # again stat($str, :e) # let multi dispatch handle it for us So, let the bikeshedding begin! Cheers, Moritz
