I think the '+' is not as prevalent as you might think.
MATLAB: ['foo' 'bar']
R: paste('foo', 'bar', sep="")
Python/C++/Ruby: "foo" + "bar"
Perl/PHP: "foo" . "bar"
C: strcat(bufcontainingfoo, "bar")
Mathematica: "foo" <> "bar"
People coming from MATLAB and R (probably a very large portion of those
trying Julia) are already used to something else. There may be a lot of
Python programmers as well, but Julia isn't trying to target Python users
specifically.
I think having a +(String, String) defined with a helpful error would be a
good idea, and I don't think it needs to be confined to the REPL (unless
something in the language depends on seeing method missing errors).
On Thursday, 3 July 2014 08:11:43 UTC-5, Samuel Colvin wrote:
>
> Fundamentally I don't think it matters which mathematical operator we use
> for an operation that's not strictly mathematical (or at least most users
> don't think of as mathematical), everyone is quite happy with "x = 4" not
> having it's rigorous meaning of "x == 4". As long as there's a compact and
> clear way of doing string concatenation I'm happy.
>
> If most people want * that's fine especially as there would need to be a
> very good reason to change it now.
>
> The point is that we should make it as easy as possible for people to
> transition to Julia from other languages, and this is one potential
> stumbling block.
>
> I agree with Tobias's suggestion of a REPL, IJulia only +(s1::String,
> s2::String) that throws an informative error.
>
> For my part I've updated Julia By Example
> <http://www.scolvin.com/juliabyexample/#Strings-Basics> to give an
> example and a link to this discussion.
>
