On 6/3/07, Jonathan Lang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
snip
From what you're saying, I get the impression that you think that "'-'
x 5" ought to produce a single string of five dashes regardless of
whether the context is item or list. Correct? (Note: I'm not asking
about what the spec says, since what it says is potentially up for
revision, given sufficient cause; I'm asking about what you think the
spec _should_ say.) If so, "cat($n xx *)" is not an adequate
replacement for "$n x *", since it produces a list of one-character
strings if used in list context. OTOH, "~cat($n xx *)" might work.
snip
The current Perl 5 behavior is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ perl -le 'my @a = ("-" x 5, "foo", "-" x 5); print "@a"'
----- foo -----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ perl -le 'my @a = (("-") x 5, "foo", ("-") x 5); print
"@a"'
- - - - - foo - - - - -
I am against anything other than that for x or xx without a really
compelling reason.
snip
Personally, I would tend to favor the notion that infix:<x> always
produces a single string. With this in mind, I'm now leaning toward
"~cat($a xx $n)" as the more verbose equivalent of "$a x $n". You
always produce a single string, and you do so lazily (according to the
way that 'cat' works in item context).
--
Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang
I assume it is a bug in Pugs implementation of cat, but
pugs> ~cat('a' xx 5)
"a a a a a"
I also am having a hard time figuring out why I would want an infinite
string. My first thought was something like
my $ten_zeros = substr(cat(0 xx *), 0, 10);
but that is more clearly written as
my $ten_zeros = 0 x 10;
