On approximately 7/28/2004 3:08 PM, came the following characters from the keyboard of Glenn Linderman:
On approximately 7/28/2004 1:47 PM, came the following characters from the keyboard of Alan Stewart:
OK, but the & is still not needed.
Upon further investigation, it appears that the & *is* needed in this case. Because I only do a "require Win32;" instead of a "use Win32;", the symbol isn't known at compile time, and the & allows it to be "forward referenced". As well as the other comments below.
Well, it might not be needed, but it is allowed, and I have them there. In lots of code. So removing the unnecessary ones would take time... lots of time.
I am just waving my hands here to say "Watch out for TMTOWTDI".
I think the Win32 authors will be restricted to the capabilities Perl provides, and Perl (5, I haven't been able to keep up with Perl 6 since I moved and also started a major programming project that now needs to be packaged, preferably with PAR) is unlikely to implement named constants that don't allow for preceeding &, since they have been legal for years. Or at least, the preceeding & may result in a less efficient constant, but any changes that force them to be taken away will certainly be incompatible.
So if I someday have to remove &, I will, but in the meantime, it isn't worth my time.
-- Glenn -- http://nevcal.com/ =========================== The best part about procrastination is that you are never bored, because you have all kinds of things that you should be doing.
