On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 08:08:13PM -0500, Joe Gottman wrote:
: I just realized a potential flaw here. Consider the code
: $a >>= 1;
:
: Will this right-shift the value of $a one bit and assign the result to $a
: (the current meaning)? Or will it assign the value 1 to each element in the
: array referenced by $a (as suggested by the new syntax). Both of these are
: perfectly valid operations, and I don't think its acceptable to have the
: same syntax mean both. I'm aware that using "�=" instead of ">>=" will
: eliminate the inconsistency, but not everyone has easy access to Unicode
: keyboards.
Well,
$a >>=<< 1
would still presumably be unambiguous, and do the right thing, albeit
with run-time dwimmery. On the other hand, we've renamed all the
other bitwise operators, so maybe we should rename these too:
+< bitwise left shift
+> bitwise right shift
which also gives us useful string bitshift ops:
~< stringwise left shift
~> stringwise right shift
as well as the never-before-thought-of:
?< boolean left shift
?> boolean right shift
Those last would be a great addition insofar as they could always
participate in constant folding. Er, unless the right argument is 0,
of course... :-)
Ain't orthogonality wonderful...
Larry
