On Saturday, October 5, 2002, at 09:33 PM, Larry Wall wrote: > > > : Additionally, parentheses have one inconsistency which brackets do > not: > : This is the following case, already shown on perl6-language: > : > : $a = (); # $a is a list reference with 0 elements > : $a = (10); # $a is the scalar 10 > : $a = (10, 20); # $a is a list reference with 2 elements > : # ... > : > : If the ability to construct lists with parentheses is removed, so is > this > : inconsistency. > > I don't think that's an important inconsistency.
[SNIP] > > : This has the added benefit that there is a significant > : visual clue about when a list is being tossed around. This doesn't > break > : any convenience, just changes the look of it: > : > : # Perl 6 # Perl 5 > : [$a, $b] ^= [$b, $a]; # ($a, $b) = ($b, $a) > : print *[$a=$b],"\n"; # print(($a=$b), "\n"); > : push @a: *[1,2,3]; # push @a, (1,2,3); > : push @a: [1,2,3]; # push @a, [1,2,3]; > > I'd rather they just work the way people expect from Perl 5. Requiring > people to say *[1,2,3] when they could say 1,2,3 is needless > obfuscation. I think needless obfuscation is treating $a = (10); as a scalar instead of a list reference containing one item when the rest of the the $a = () are list references. -Noah
