Re: Please rename 'but' to 'has'.
Everyone I've ever talked to about it agrees that defining things to be a
negative is just a bad idea. Consider:
if (gronk) do_this();
else do_that();
versus
if (not_gronk) do_that();
else do_this();
It is one of the standard refactoring tricks to replace the second one
with the first. The word has is in the positive, whereas but is a
negative, but it assigns a positive, even more confusing.
The word now would be much nicer to indicate a change if you made it
orthogonal to the has. So, use it as follows.
To assign a compile time property:
$a is now red;
To test a compile time property:
if ($a is red) {...}
To assign a runtime property:
$a now has green;
Who cares if the order is reversed. Make it work both ways.
To test a runtime property:
if ($a has green) {...}
Me wrote:
I agree 'but' seems a tad odd, and I like the elegance of your
suggestion at first sight. However...
First, but is just strange. I have a thing and I want to tell you it
is
red, so I say 'but'. Huh?
banana but red;
foo but false;
According to Larry, run time properties will most often be used
to contradict a built-in or compile time property. If he is right
about the dominant case being a contradiction, 'but' works
better for me than anything else I can think of, including 'now'
(explained below).
Re: Please rename 'but' to 'has'.
On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: Please don't use 'but' to associate runtime properties to things. Please call it 'has'. How about both? Luke
Re: Please rename 'but' to 'has'.
On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote:
Everyone I've ever talked to about it agrees that defining things to be a
negative is just a bad idea. Consider:
if (gronk) do_this();
else do_that();
versus
if (not_gronk) do_that();
else do_this();
But look how well Cunless reads :) IMO, Cunless is one of the best
readability decisions that Perl ever made.
It is one of the standard refactoring tricks to replace the second one
with the first. The word has is in the positive, whereas but is a
negative, but it assigns a positive, even more confusing.
You wouldn't expect
$foobar but true
to actually be false, would you? So, I wouldn't say assigning a positive
is all that confusing.
To assign a compile time property:
$a is now red;
That uses too many of my precious keystrokes.
To test a runtime property:
if ($a has green) {...}
This brings up an interesting point.
if ($a but green) {...}
doesn't make a lot of sense. Would it be possible to make boolean Cis
test both runtime and compile-time properties? But I suppose that could
be confusing on the reader
Luke
Re: Please rename 'but' to 'has'.
In a message dated Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Daniel S. Wilkerson writes: It is one of the standard refactoring tricks to replace the second one with the first. The word has is in the positive, whereas but is a negative, but it assigns a positive, even more confusing. but isn't a negative, not really. but can be read basically two ways in English, either as a synonym of and which happens to carry a tone of warning or things not being quite ordinary, or as a synonym for except that. 0 but true Means 0 *and also* true, even though this isn't the usual state of affairs. Makes perfect sense to me. has makes no sense at all in this context. Were I to read: 0 has true my first reaction would be, huh? Since when? Or imagine a Color class, where you wanted to state that this black, if it were only just a bit brighter, would be green: $foo = Color.black but green; I think that black has green just sounds plain weird. but is absolutely perfect, Larry. I say keep it. Trey -- Trey Harris Secretary and Executive SAGE -- The System Administrators Guild (www.sage.org) Opinions above are not necessarily those of SAGE.
