On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:24:50AM -0800, Austin Hastings wrote: > --- Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > At 8:47 AM +0000 1/28/03, Piers Cawley wrote: > > >> $ref[$key] > > >> > > >> an array or hash look-up??? > > > > > >Decided at runtime? > > > > How? People use strings as array indices and ints/floats as hash > > indices, and count on autoconversion to Make It Work. > > On the one hand: Java/ECMA/J-script does it.
That's nice, but Perl isn't Java/ECMAScript/JavaScript/JScript/C/C++/Pascal. It's Perl. Perl uses square brackets for arrays, and curly braces for hashes. Period. And Perl 6 will continue in the path of Perl 1..5, *not* in the path of some other broken syntax. If you have any questions about this, please refer to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd editions of Programming Perl, or to any of the millions of Perl programmers who have that distinction hard-wired into their wetware. Z.
