Re: Flexible parsing (was Tying & Overloading)

[Larry Wall]

John Porter writes:
: Larry Wall wrote:
: > On the other hand, people don't generally declare which dialect they're
: > going to speak in before they start speaking.  
: 
: On the other other hand, perl already embraces the philosophy
: of pre-declaring things that change the language.  That's what
: a pragma is.  Even "my" could be construed this way.

Certainly, sorry I wasn't clear.  I wasn't suggesting that Perl try to
intuit the dialect--I was just pointing that out as the opposite end of
the continuum from the bureaucratic red tape of trying to ask the
government permission to use non-French words in a legal document.  :-)

For good or ill, a computer program is more like a legal document than
a bedtime story.

Larry