On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 07:29:33PM -0000, Perl6 RFC Librarian wrote:
> This RFC proposes that C<m//> and C<s///> be dropped from the language
> altogether, and instead be replaced with new C<match> and C<subst>
> builtins, with the following syntaxes:
>
> $res = match /pattern/flags, $string
> $new = subst /pattern/newpattern/flags, $string
I think that C<subst> is too syntactically close yet semantically far
from C<substr> that the evil demons of confusion will rear their ugly
heads.
> match; # all defaults (pattern is /\w+/?)
Er, why? I usually check for the inverse:
while (<>) { while (<>) {
next if /^\s*$/; next unless match;
} }
Hmm, now that I write it, it doesn't seem so bad. *Except* that
"match" isn't a good description of what's going on.
> subst; # like s///, pretty useless :-)
Given the above, why not make a bare C<subst> do something equally
useful? Here are some ideas:
subst; # removes leading whitespace
subst; # removes trailing whitespace
subst; # removes leading and trailing whitespace
subst; # synonym for chomp (Okay, it's a stretch :-)
> next if /\s+/ || /\w+/; next if match /\s+/ or match /\w+/;
Gosh this is annoying. I *really* don't want to have to type "match"
all the time. And now I have to use C<or> rather than C<||>, which is
already ingrained in my head (I rarely use "or" or "and")
> Finally, it requires a little too much typing still for my tastes.
Indeed.
> Perhaps we should make "m" and "s" at least shortcuts to the names,
> possibly allowing users to bind them to the front of the pattern
> (similar to some of RFC 138's suggestions). Maybe these two could be
> equivalent:
>
> $new = subst /old/new/i, $old; == $new = s/old/new/i, $old;
>
> And then it doesn't look that radical anymore. This is similar to RFC
> 138, only C<$old> is not modified.
I wonder what happens when people start typing
$new = subst s/old/new/i, $old;
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
