Matthew wrote:
use base 16;
my $a = 10;
say $a;
puts the number 0x10 into $a, and outputs `10'. Here, say $a.fmt('%d')
would output `16'.
As someone who has implemented, and used, mini-languages with such a
feature, I'd say that the confusion that it would cause does
significantly outweigh any potential benefit.
Question: what would be the behavior of:
use base 8;
use base 10;
$a = 10;
I think that $a now holds the value 0d8, because 0o10 is 0d8. That is,
"use base 10" would always be a no-op.
A pragma to control the default behavior of stringification would be
less problematic -- indeed would be useful -- but even then it's
probably more useful to have it as a property of the class/object that
holds the value: { my $a = 10 but :stringification-base(16) }.
When you have a large number of constants that you want to hard-code
into source code, it's probably better to scope it to an individual
expression. Perhaps { my @a = :16< 12 1a 1b > } would get you most of
the way.
I have no problem if you want to make it possible to write such a pragma
(just subclass the grammar to change the behavior of numeric literals)
but it should be something that lives in in a user module with a nice
long scary name.
I'd also note that "use base" has an existing, different, meaning in Perl 5.
