Why -> cannot autoquote the LHS (was Re: RFC 244 (v1) Method calls should not suffer...)

[Nathan Wiger]

> =head1 TITLE
> 
> Method calls should not suffer from the action on a distance

> Currently,
> 
>   foo->bar($baz)
> 
> can be parsed either as C<<'foo'->bar($baz)>>, or as C<<foo()->bar($baz)>>
> depending on how the symbol C<foo> was used on other places.  The proposal
> is to always choose the first meaning: make C<< -> >> autoquote the bareword
> on the left.

Before I forget to mention this again, here is why -> *cannot* autoquote
the LHS:

   package Foo;

   use overload q("") => STRING;

   sub new { bless {@_}, shift; }

   sub STRING {
       return "Hello World!";
   }

   sub getdata {
       # do stuff
   }

   package main;

   my $foo = new Foo;
   @data = $foo->getdata;  # !!!   


Unless we want that last line to fail - essentially rendering use
overload and polymorphic objects useless - then the -> operator must not
autoquote the LHS.

(And if the RFC is proposing autoquoting only barewords, then I think
that's _really_ inconsistent and should not be done.)

-Nate