Andy Wardley wrote:
s/~=/=~/
Indeed. And that's precisely why we're changing it to ~~ in Perl 6. ;-)
The first 3 all relate to the familiar concept of 'minus', or more
precisely a delta between two values. The last uses '-' as 'dash',
another familiar concept which doesn't grate against the first usage,
IMHO.
Just as ~> and <~ use ~ as a "squiggly dash", which doesn't grate either,
IMHO.
The arrow is a special case. I don't read that first character
as '-', I think of the operator as one. I guess the visual cue forces
me to see it like that.
I'm suggesting that ~> and <~ will be the same.
I'm just suggesting the same for the ~ character:
This is where I get lost. I see 4 different concepts being overloaded
onto '~'.
I'd suggest that that's simply because your brain hasn't yet "chunked" the
various uses of the ~ character in these four multicharacter symbols,
the way it already has with the - character. So you read the ~'s as symbols
rather than characters within symbols, which leads to the "matchy" or
"stringy" overtones of their appearance to you.
But once that chunking does occur for you -- and I'm suggesting it would --
then ~> and <~ will become atomic symbols in your brain, and I think the
issue will disappear.
Nevertheless, I deeply respect your concerns and your opinions, and appreciate
that you look the time to set them out so clearly.
So, we're going to have to agree to differ, I suspect. Having presented our
respective arguments cogently in this forum, we can happily sit back and
let Larry shoulder the burden of deciding this.
Thanks, Andy.
Damian
