Re: Expunge use English from Perl?
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote: Yeah, I've never liked the _ syntax, I've always thought it was weird (to say the least). I think grouping file tests would be much cleaner. As long as you are okay with having to restat for 'or' clauses. (There are work arounds, and supposedly 'this or that' is less common for file tests.) -- Bryan C. Warnock ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Expunge use English from Perl?
On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 07:32:42AM -0400, Bryan C. Warnock wrote: On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote: Yeah, I've never liked the _ syntax, I've always thought it was weird (to say the least). I think grouping file tests would be much cleaner. As long as you are okay with having to restat for 'or' clauses. (There are work arounds, and supposedly 'this or that' is less common for file tests.) A rather sweeping statement. ANDing makes more sense for the permissions checks, but ORing makes more sense for the type checks. For example, I can imagine -f $foo || -l $foo being a rather common idiom. -- Bryan C. Warnock ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) -- $jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/ # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent toRFC #0101)
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote: Russ Allbery wrote: I've found the use of use English in code I had to maintain to be annoying and unhelpful, and to actually degrade the maintainability of the code Y'know, I couldn't have said this better myself. :-) I've always felt that "use English" was a waste of time and effort, a bandaid trying to act as a tourniquet. Well, I think it has some limited uses. Remember that not everyone programs in perl all day everyday. Many competent people are only occasionally perl programmers. I find that I don't remember many of the less-frequently-used perlvars (where less-frequently-used depends on the types of programs I write, obviously). I certainly couldn't tell you off-hand the differences among $ $ $( and $). I'd have to look them up. I think it's a nice little bit of optional sugar and I don't see any reason to throw it away. -- Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept. of Physics Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent to RFC #0101)
On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 10:00:49AM -0400, Andy Dougherty wrote: On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote: Y'know, I couldn't have said this better myself. :-) I've always felt that "use English" was a waste of time and effort, a bandaid trying to act as a tourniquet. I think it's a nice little bit of optional sugar and I don't see any reason to throw it away. The key point is that it's optional. If you think it's a waste of time and effort, don't use it. If other people use it, well... does Perl stop people programming in ways you don't like? -- It is better to wear chains than to believe you are free, and weight yourself down with invisible chains.
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent to RFC #0101)
Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I find that I don't remember many of the less-frequently-used perlvars (where less-frequently-used depends on the types of programs I write, obviously). I certainly couldn't tell you off-hand the differences among $ $ $( and $). I'd have to look them up. I never understood why these were variables. You don't change UIDs or GIDs that often, and when you do you tend to want precise control and because they're variables, they have weird interaction semantics and you have to assign to them in just the right order to get done what you want to get done. See recent threads on comp.lang.perl.moderated. I'd honestly rather see getuid, geteuid, getgid, getegid, and getgroups, along with some consistent and complete subset of the setting functions (with portability magic behind the scenes), in a separate module that only those programs that need to do UID fiddling need to load. I guess the exception is getpwuid($), which is probably done more than any other operation on UIDs, but maybe just keep that single variable. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent to RFC #0101)
Simon Cozens wrote: On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 10:00:49AM -0400, Andy Dougherty wrote: On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Nathan Wiger wrote: Y'know, I couldn't have said this better myself. :-) I've always felt that "use English" was a waste of time and effort, a bandaid trying to act as a tourniquet. I think it's a nice little bit of optional sugar and I don't see any reason to throw it away. The key point is that it's optional. If you think it's a waste of time and effort, don't use it. If other people use it, well... does Perl stop people programming in ways you don't like? I agree with you. That's why I'd never RFC that we should lose it.* I was just voicing my opinion that I personally think it's a waste. But that doesn't mean others don't like it. ;-) -Nate * assuming it doesn't harm the language, which it doesn't currently
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent to RFC #0101)
On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 04:39:32PM -0700, Nathan Wiger wrote: My personal feeling is that I'd love "use English" to be expunged from the language altogether - it's unnecessary bloat that only increases the number of mistakes that people can make. But I'm not sure if I have the guts to write that RFC just yet. ;-) Are you talking about the overlong variable names? Aliasing -X is being proposed through a 'use english;' mechanism. Z.
Re: Expunge use English from Perl? (was Re: Perl6Storm: Intent to RFC #0101)
Adam Turoff wrote: On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 04:39:32PM -0700, Nathan Wiger wrote: My personal feeling is that I'd love "use English" to be expunged from the language altogether - it's unnecessary bloat that only increases the number of mistakes that people can make. But I'm not sure if I have the guts to write that RFC just yet. ;-) Are you talking about the overlong variable names? Aliasing -X is being proposed through a 'use english;' mechanism. It's a good thing we've got Larry Wall to untie the Gordian knot of perl6. One rfc to add more english, one to take it away. -- Robert Mathews Software Engineer Excite@Home
Re: Expunge use English from Perl?
My personal feeling is that I'd love "use English" to be expunged from the language altogether - it's unnecessary bloat that only increases the number of mistakes that people can make. But I'm not sure if I have the guts to write that RFC just yet. ;-) Are you talking about the overlong variable names? Aliasing -X is being proposed through a 'use english;' mechanism. Yes, but perhaps a little bit of both. Truthfully, I've always seen long alternatives as useless bloat, not used widely over the long term. Once people learn the shortcuts, they use them. Expunging "use English" may will improve Perl syntax, since it's one less way to do things with already dubious value. Yes, the overlong variable names are a waste of time, IMO, because I've never seen them used in "real code". It's almost a rite of passage to take off the training wheels and use the "real names" of the variables. Who wants to write $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR when you can write $/ ? I'm not vehemently opposed to "use English", or even the long alternatives to -r and -w that RFC 290 proposes. But I do think, truthfully: 1. They don't solve the real syntactic problems 2. Very few people will ever use them long-term So if they bloat the language, we should consider expunging them. They certainly bloat Camel with duplicate definitions. And I consider the mneumonic of $! much stronger than $ERRNO (or was that $OS_ERROR or $SYS_ERROR or ??) Personally, my stance is that we should all come to accept that we use and love a language with a syntax that drives many people mad. Not everyone's gonna like Perl, so I think we should just accept it and move on. -Nate
Re: Expunge use English from Perl?
On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 05:11:30PM -0700, Nathan Wiger wrote: Yes, but perhaps a little bit of both. Truthfully, I've always seen long alternatives as useless bloat, not used widely over the long term. Once people learn the shortcuts, they use them. Expunging "use English" may will improve Perl syntax, since it's one less way to do things with already dubious value. A lot of use English has to do with aliasing global variable linenoise, which is already going away. For instance, $/ is becoming per-handle, and $: (?) is probably going away because it has nasty action-at-a-distance properties, and FORTRAN programmers never use it to offset the zero-index to one. (Abigail uses it to make japhs that bizarrely store the number 17.) It has nothing to do with improving the syntax though, because everything in use English is a variable that serves as a reference to some other variable. I'm not vehemently opposed to "use English", or even the long alternatives to -r and -w that RFC 290 proposes. But I do think, truthfully: 1. They don't solve the real syntactic problems No, because the syntactic problems are -s(FH)/2, and that is solved by fsize(FH)/2 iff -s is replaced with fsize (or a better spelling thereof). 2. Very few people will ever use them long-term I dunno. I remember looking at some code that used '-x _' that had half a department befuddled. -rwx FH is better, and gets rid of the special case bare _ syntax. Z.
Re: Expunge use English from Perl?
Adam Turoff wrote: It has nothing to do with improving the syntax though, because everything in use English is a variable that serves as a reference to some other variable. Yes, and that's why I really think it's a waste of time. ;-) I'm not vehemently opposed to "use English"... But I do think, 1. They don't solve the real syntactic problems No, because the syntactic problems are -s(FH)/2, and that is solved by fsize(FH)/2 iff -s is replaced with fsize (or a better spelling thereof). This is one thing that I'm scared most of, and that is having two alternatives which work only in certain contexts. I'm sure p5p has already extensively looked at -s(FH)/2 being "wickedly broken" (as I believe Tom put it), but the solution should theoretically be to make -s(FH)/2 work. The consensus has already pretty much said that they want -s et all to stick around. So if RFC 290's idea is still to replace -X, then I'm very much against it. But I was under the impression that they're just "use english" alternatives. If, however, these alternatives fix bugs that -X can't handle, then that's not good. I'll dig through the p5p archives and toke.c to see if any wisdom is magically imparted on me. ;-) 2. Very few people will ever use them long-term I dunno. I remember looking at some code that used '-x _' that had half a department befuddled. -rwx FH is better, and gets rid of the special case bare _ syntax. Yeah, I've never liked the _ syntax, I've always thought it was weird (to say the least). I think grouping file tests would be much cleaner. -Nate
