On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 1:21 AM, Mason Kramer <mason.kra...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Sorry. > > TTIAR = Two Terms In A Row. > > It's always a syntax error in Perl6, unlike Perl 5. > > print, say, and sin as you've used them are not terms, actually. They're > expressions which happen to be function calls. You're calling .WHAT on > their return values. This is predictable going forward from TTIAR: > Hmm... I think this will only make sense to me if I ask you to define what a "term" is, but I am sure that this term (pun intended) is difficult to define. In particular, if a number like 5 is a term, then I would think that the following expression contains four terms: 2 > 3 ?? 5 !! 6 I figure that 2, 3, 5 and 6 are all terms. Or how about: print 5 if 4; I'd think that if 5 is a term, then so is 4. > The return value of print is True, which has the Bool type. The return value of say is also True, but I > think there's some kind of special casing thing going on in the repl, where the return value of say is > suppressed. There's no valid dispatch for sin() with no arguments, so that one gives you an error. Indeed, it is. Strange. I would have thought that print, with no arguments, would give me an error like with "sin". And why does "print" return True? What's "True" about it? > If you want the "noun form" of these subs, prefix with &. > &print.WHAT > Multi() > > &say.WHAT > Multi() > > &sin.WHAT > Multi(). Interesting. I imagine that Multi() means that the function has multiple definitions. For example, I expect that "sin" has one implementation for floats and another for complex numbers. > But seriously, congrats on breaking .WHAT in 60 seconds flat ;) :-) Thanks for helping me learn Perl 6. It's a very neat language. Daniel. -- No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email, but a large number of electrons were severely inconvenienced.
