Re: RFC 84 (v1) Replace => (stringifying comma) with =>

[Bart Lateur]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000 15:27:03 +0200, Bart Lateur wrote:

>I kinda like it.

I'm not sure any more if I still like it as much. As proposed, it seems
very unperlish (as we know Perl today). It would virtually turn Perl
into a whole different language. Well, half a different language.  ;-)

I, too, have a counterproposal, although very sketchy. Imagine that =>
automagically "blesses" the scalar on the left, as "this item has been
marked as the key of a pair". It could be even just one flag bit in the
scalar descriptor, or such. Scalars would still be scalars, and in
assignment to arrays:

        @array = ( a=>1, b=>2, 'c', 3 );

@array would still have 6 items. But, in this example, both the 'a' and
the 'b' would still be marked as a pair key, and 

        somesub(@array);

would do the automagic thing, as if the above expression was used
directly.

All in all, I think it would be a far less intrusive change, while still
maintaining most of the advances. Wouldn't it?

I don't know about the multiway comparisons. The value "zero but true",
while still being represented by the string "0", looks... strange. For a
scalar, at least.

-- 
        Bart.