@ does the Positional role
% does Associative
& does Callable
$ causes its value to be an item (its values do not flatten into an
outer list when you use `flat`)
my %hash is SetHash;
Array does Positional, and all of its values are itemized
We are unlikely to call $ variables "generic" because the word
"generic" is too generic.
For example Java has generics, and they are not variables.
Why muddy the waters by using a word that has many different meanings
in different programming languages?
On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 1:21 AM, Richard Hainsworth
<rnhainswo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It also seems to me that 'scalar' gives the wrong impression compared to
> arrays. A scalar in a vector is a component of a vector.
>
> I was thinking of "generic".
>
> Hence "$variable" is a generic variable because it can hold any type of
> content.
>
>
>
> On Friday, June 09, 2017 02:10 PM, Gabor Szabo wrote:
>>
>> Looking at https://docs.perl6.org/language/variables there are 4
>> variable types with sigil: $, @, %, &.
>> In Perl 5 I used to call them scalar, array, hash, and function
>> respectively, even if the scalar variable had a reference to an array
>> in it.
>>
>> How do you call them in Perl 6?
>>
>> As I understand @ always holds an array (@.^name is always Array or
>> some Array[type]). Similarly % always holds a hash and & is always a
>> function or a method.
>> So calling them array, hash, and function sounds good.
>>
>> However I am not sure what to call the variables with a $ sigil?
>> Should they be called "scalars"? Wouldn't that case confusion as there
>> is also a container-type called Scalar.
>>
>> The word "scalar" appears twice in the document describing the
>> variables: https://docs.perl6.org/language/variables and a total of
>> 135 in the whole doc including the 5to6 documents and the document
>> describing the Scalar type.
>> The document describing the Scalar type:
>> https://docs.perl6.org/type/Scalar the term "$-sigiled variable" is
>> used which seems to be a bit long for general use.
>>
>> So I wonder how do *you* call them?
>>
>> Gabor
