Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 03:25:17PM -0400, John Siracusa wrote:
> : Damian may not like the colon, but I couldn't help thinking that the "_"
> : could be replaced with ":" and things would be cleaner. Example:
>
> Well, but the _ really is part of the name, insofar as it's trying to
> isolate the namespace. Even with : we had to say that it would probably
> be stored in the symbol table with the leading colon. Plus history is
> on the side of leading _ meaning "private implementation detail", and
> the : is awfully confusing in the neighborhood of adverb pairs. If it
> were just sigiled variables, the : would probably be fine, but
>
> method :foo() {...}
>
> just has a strangeness to it that won't go away. Arguably that's a feature,
> but I'm mostly worried with visual confusion with all the other colons
> in Perl 6.
Just wanted to chip in here and say that I *do* think that its
strangeness is a feature. History may be on the side of _, but
consider that : wasn't valid syntax.
I haven't written enough Perl 6 to say whether or not this is
confusing with adverb pairs, but I love the colon for private
methods/attributes and it's the one thing separating your new thinking
from my ideal Perl 6 OO.
--
matt diephouse
http://matt.diephouse.com
