Tom Christiansen wrote:
>
> carefully consider whether any scant benefit these cutesinesses
> might provide can be truly worth further exacerbating the rampant
> inscrutability problems (stemming mainly from punctuation in lieu
> of alphabetics and from magically implicit targets, arguments, and
> side-effects) for which Perl is already soundly--and not always
> undeservedly--derided.
Actually, it might surprise you to know that I overall agree with you.
The reason I wrote RFC 170 was to provide a general-purpose mechanism
which could allow backwards-compat syntax for RFC 164, which proposes
replacing =~ and !~ with builtin functions match(), subst(), and
trade().
I'm personally torn, because here is what's in my head:
1. I like =~, personally, I think it's cool
2. Many people - including Larry - have voiced their desire
to see =~ die a horrible death
3. However, #2 would break way so many people's views of
Perl so as to make it almost unrecognizable
So, I decided to author two RFC's that tie together all this to try and
satisfy all these requirements:
RFC 164: Replace =~, !~, m//, s///, and tr// with match(), subst(),
and trade()
RFC 170: Generalize =~ to a special-purpose assignment operator
164 satisfies those that think =~ and !~ should hit the high road. And,
actually, it winds up with a set of functions that are actually more
powerful in many ways than our current pattern matching tools. Plus,
grep, split, etc, etc are already functions, so why should other pattern
tools be any different?
However, there needs to be a backwards-compat syntax so that those
(myself included) that want to use =~ still can. In doing so, RFC 170
actually winds up with a more extensible and general purpose tool, which
is a cool side effect.
Anyways, what I'm trying to express through all this "rambling" is that
I don't think this is a mere load of cutesy syntactic sugar. Rather, RFC
164 *cuts down* on the "magic syntax" for which Perl is criticized
widely, making things more consistent and powerful as well. RFC 170
makes it so that all the Perl lovers don't run away in terror.
-Nate
