Aaron Sherman writes:
: On Sun, 2002-04-21 at 10:59, Trey Harris wrote:
:
: > 0 has true
: >
: > my first reaction would be, "huh? Since when?"
:
: Dare I say... "now"? ;-)
:
: Sorry, someone had to say it.
:
: Personally, even though it sucks up namespace, I think what we're seeing
: here is a need for more than one keyword that are synonyms. "but" and
: "now" seem to cover a good deal of ground.
:
: 0 now true
:
: Is misleading, IMHO, as 0 is not now true. 0, in this context is an
: expression, and we're saying that that expression is now true. "but"
: conveys this much more clearly. However, as many have pointed out, there
: are a number of cases where but is equally misleading.
:
: Is there any problem with allowing both but and now? It might even be
: elegant to use both at the same time:
:
: $x now integer but true
:
: which is clearer to my eye than
:
: $x now integer now true
:
: which seems to change the properties of $x twice without reconciling the
: changes with each other.
:
: In any other language this would be unthinkable, but I think it fits
: nicely with Perl's philosophy. Not TMTOWTDI, which I think is often used
: to excuse the inexcusable, but the idea that Perl reflects the ways in
: which humans use language. We want to convey shades of meaning that do
: not translate directly to action.
:
: So, have I just lost it, or would it make sense to have now and but?
:
: Apologies to the person who started this thread. I know you thought
: "has" was ideal, and I understand why. It's just that between "but" and
: "now", I think you get more ground covered than you do with "has" and
: either one.
Perl 6 will try to avoid synonyms but make it easy to declare them. At
worst it would be something like:
my sub operator:now ($a,$b) is inline { $a but $b }
Larry
