All this talk about adding another undef, called null, that is just a
different logical and semantical version of "not defined," or "not
known," or however you want to say it, strikes me as very odd.
I admit I am new enough to Perl that 5 was my first version, but still...
it seems better to make the new things we add consistent with the Perlish
ways, than to make the new behaviors mimic other languages. If you are
saying that it is needed to help give clarity to users of that language,
in their early stages of migrating to Perl, that is one thing. But, there
are lots of changes to basic behavior that would assist the serial drivers
I've written in Perl, but they would be awful things to add into the core.
Better is to make a module around the special cases that I want to
simplify. undef is wonderful; undef is great! All hail the great undef! If
you need additional semantics than provided by undef, why not make a
module? CPAN is the biggest strength of Perl, I don't think it would be
good use to start dumping our special cases into the core. Can't we make a
tool to make tools, instead of just making another SQL?
use MyModule qw( null some_odd_combination_of_behaviors );
my $name = null();
print "Hello world!" if some_odd_combination_of_behaviors();
or,
use MyModule;
my $obj = new MyModule;
print "Hello world!" if $obj->unknown();
I understand the differences between SQL NULL and Perl undef, I just don't
understand what defaco general problem is solved with adding it.
Paris Sinclair | 4a75737420416e6f74686572
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | 205065726c204861636b6572
www.sinclairinternetwork.com
