On Mon, Aug 28, 2000 at 08:12:22AM -0700, Nathan Wiger wrote:
> Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> I agree too, any suggestions are welcome. The fact that 'sub' and
> 'substr' are already taken makes this tough...
Well, if s/// stays around, I imagine that's what people will use, so
we could call the function form C<substitute>. Only those weirdos
using the function form would have to pay the syntactic penalty. ;-)
> > Given the above, why not make a bare C<subst> do something equally
> > useful? Here are some ideas:
> >
> > subst; # removes leading and trailing whitespace
>
> I like this one alot.
Me too. I put down the others to give people brain-food mostly :-)
But again, this doesn't seem to make much sense in what I would think
would be its common use (using the spelled out version):
while (<>) {
substitute; # What the hell am I substituting?
...
}
Similarly with match:
while (<>) {
next unless match; # Er, match *what*?
...
}
Both leave me hanging. I can't read Perl in english like I'm used to.
> > I wonder what happens when people start typing
> >
> > $new = subst s/old/new/i, $old;
>
> They get a syntax error! :-)
>
> Honestly, I don't think that's a big problem. People don't do this with
> split() now. I think people will either use the "backwards compat" s///
> form or the function form.
But they might *accidentally* use both. I'd prefer that Perl ... you
guessed it ... DWIM here. I.e.,
$new = substitute s/old/new/i, $old;
would be equivalent to
$new = substitute /old/new/i, $old;
With a warning if they're turned on. Same for match.
Hmm. Does using the function form still give the ability to pick
delimiters? And what does *this* mean:
@stuff = split match /foo/, $string;
?
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
