On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 06:28:28PM -0400, Miko O'Sullivan wrote: > From: "Larry Wall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > : ? - force to bool context > > : ! - force to bool context, negate > > : + - force to numeric context > > : - - force to numeric context, negate > > : ~ - force to string context > > > > We're obviously missing the "force to string context, negate" operator. > :-) > > Mr. Wall, may I be excused? My brain is full. Oh, I have to stick it out > with everyone else? OK, um.... > > Just so I understand... why do we need "force to blah context" operators at > all? Are we planning on doing a lot of context forcing? Isn't "a lot of > context forcing" mean that the context concept isn't working? Nay, say I. I > think context will continue to work. Which means... maybe we don't need all > that shorthand. I've been quite happy with the scalar function in Perl5. > What if we just had a few more functions like that for the occasional > context forcing, or even just one "context" function that takes a context > name as the first argument.
The negate operators we have already: perl -e '$x = "0"; print !$x' perl -e '$x = "10.000"; print -$x' The others save use doing: perl -e '$x = "2"; print !!$x' perl -e '$x = "10.000"; print -(-$x)' perl -e 'print "" . localtime' OK, Perl 5 doesn't have all these contexts, and these may be not the most compelling of examples, but you get the idea. -- Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pjcj.net
