On Dec 21, 2013, at 12:00 AM, Moritz Lenz <mor...@faui2k3.org> wrote:
> On 12/20/2013 04:52 AM, Richard Hainsworth wrote: >> OK x not xx. >> >> The doubling of operators is confusing. > > OTOH having a single operator which two different meanings is also confusing > (and very un-perlish). Sometimes, yeah. On a related note, I sometimes wish that qw«= < >» and the like were general-purpose comparison operators rather than explicitly numeric comparators. I understand why Perl uses them in the way that it does (mainly, it’s a legacy thing from Perl 5, when there weren’t any data types and the distinction between “number” and “string” had to be built into the operator); but it takes a lot of getting used to, and there are times that I wish that the language would use some argument-based magic to let me sort arbitrary objects using “<” instead of “before”. If it wasn’t for the need for backward compatibility, I’d want something like the following: $a < $b :as(Num) #[coerce $a and $b to Num. Same as “$a < $b” now.] $a < $b :as(Str) #[coerce $a and $b to Str. Same as “$a lt $b” now.] $a < $b :as(*) #[don’t coerce anything. Same as “$a before $b” now.] $a < $b #[coerce $b to whatever type $a is for the comparison. No simple equivalent now.] That strikes me as better “principle of least surprise” than the current approach. Alas, I suspect that the ship has long since sailed on this idea.
