Re: Grammar (was: Re: Linux.com Online Chat)

[Simon Cozens]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 10:31:41AM +0100, Mark Fowler wrote:
> Perl is easier to parse simply because all the irregularities are known
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> and documented.  They're not in English.  In addition to the above
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Uhm, where?

> "The British Left Waffles on Argentina"

Perl beginners look away now. You're not going to enjoy this. :)

sub four { $_[0]x4 };                               print four things;
open four, "/dev/null";                             print four things;
package four; use subs qw(print); sub print{die@_}; print four things;
# (Why doesn't that one work properly?)

(And that's even without playing with sub things{})

Perl requires a similar amount of knowledge to parse, although the
knowledge is rather more domain specific - what subs are defined, what globs
are available, what packages are defined, what filehandles are open, and so
on.

-- 
<Sauvin> Remember: amateurs built the Ark; _professionals_ built the
Titantic.