Damian wrote: > (b) the symmetry of: > Logical: && || !! > Bitwise: .& .| .! > Superpositional: & | ! > is important...mnemonically, DWIMically, and aesthetically.
When I read that this morning I worried - as I do when I read most things from Damian (but that's a different story). I think it came down to what I think was a violation of the Principle of Least Surprise, in the form of good Huffman coding of operators. The proposed superpositional operators (& | !) are shorter than the proposed logical operators (&& || !!). Normally the shorter operator (or, in English, word) is the more common one. Is superposition really more common than boolean combination? I sort of toyed with the idea that maybe it should be the logical operators which are the short ones (& | !) and the rarer superposition ones that require you to press another key (&& || !!). This had the added bonus of leaving logical-not the way we all love, and it probably had some nostalgia element for both B (*) programmers still out there with respect to & and |. But now I see some examples and I'm not so sure. The size of the doubled-up operators seem to visually separate the arguments to the logical operations better. This is especially so if the precedence for these operators fall the way people have been saying. Which looks better? if ($a == 1|2|3 || $b eq "x"|"y"|"z") or if ($a == 1||2||3 | $b eq "x"||"y"||"z") ? Opinions welcomed, but tell us all what typeface you're using. Besides, maybe superposition is going to turn out to be a very common thing in Perl after all. I can guess Damian's response to that. I think I've already decided that I prefer it the way it is (for recent values of "is"). I just need some kind soul to pat me on the head and tell me it's OK. (Please excuse the Monash staff member, it's been a difficult week.) (*) The precursor to C, not the highly formal OO language. -- Debbie Pickett http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~debbiep [EMAIL PROTECTED] My parents went to a world without bilateral symmetry and all they brought back was this lousy F-shirt.
