Trey Harris writes:
: One of the little bugaboos that got me a lot my first N years of doing
: Perl was that {m,} is a quantifier meaning "m or more", but {,n} is *not*
: a quantifier meaning "up to n". People like symmetry, and it seems
: logical that {,n} would DWIM, but it doesn't. I still make the mistake on
: occassion.
:
: I can only think of one reason to disallow it (unless there's a parsing
: issue somewhere that I can't immediately see): some people might expect
: DWIM behavior to be implicit M=0, and others might expect M=1. But I
: honestly don't see that as compelling--if you read {m,} as "m or more",
: and {,n} as "n or less", then I think M should clearly default to 0.
:
: Is there something I'm missing here? If not, why not add some DWIMiness
: and make {,n} work?
It's unlikely that {n,m} will still have that meaning in Perl 6. Maybe we'll
have something like this:
Perl 5 Perl 6
{1,3} <1..3>
{3} <3>
{3,} <3+>
{0,3} <3->
Then again, maybe not...
Larry
