Fwd: zip: stop when and where?

David Storrs Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:38:53 -0700

Both Luke and I missed the fact that my mail and his response wentonly to each other so, with his permission, here it is as a forward.


--Dks



Begin forwarded message:

From: Luke Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 5, 2005 1:48:54 AM EDT
To: David Storrs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: zip: stop when and where?
Reply-To: Luke Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


On 10/4/05, David Storrs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

How about:

@foo = ('a', 'b', 'c');

for @foo ¥ 1..6 :fillin(undef) # a 1 b 2 c 3 undef 4 undef 5undef 6

for @foo ¥ 1..6 :fillin('')       # a 1 b 2 c 3 '' 4 '' 5 '' 6
for @foo ¥ 1..6 :fillin(0)        # a 1 b 2 c 3 0 4 0 5 0 6
for @foo ¥ 1..6 :fillin(return)   # same as:  return ('a', 1, 'b', 2
'c', 3);

A couple of things bother me about this, though:

- Bad endweight on the adverb.  It looks like you are modifying the
second list, not the ¥ op


That's because you are.  I can't seem to find the document that
describes this, but as far as I recall (and my memory may be fuzzy
here), infix operators with adverbs look roughly like this:

   rule infixop { <term> <op> <term> <adverb>? }

Where <adverb> is, of course, greedy.  So since .. is tighter than Y:

    for @foo Y 1..6 :fillin(undef) {...}

Is equivalent to:

    for @foo Y (1..6 :fillin(undef)) {...}

And to get it modifying Y you need to do:

    for (@foo) Y (1..6) :fillin(undef) {...}

(Parens added around @foo for symmetry).

for @foo ¥ 1..6 :fillin(last)     # a 1 b 2 c 3


Uh, I don't think that works.  First off, it would have to be:

    for (@foo) Y (1..6) :fillin{ last } {...}

But I don't think that works either, since you want that last to be
associated with the for loop, which it is not lexically inside.
Honestly, I just don't think it's an option, and that :short/:long (or
:min/:max) is a better option.  However, I wonder how you would get
behavior like this:

    for (@foo) Y (@bar, undef xx Inf) Y (1...) :short -> $foo, $bar,
$index {...}

Hmm, probably just like that :-)

Could something like this syntax be made to work?

for (@foo ¥:fillin(undef) 1..6) but true      # a but true, 1 but
true...undef but true, 6 but true


I think you've stumbled upon the reason why we made adverbs come after
operators.  The important thing is the zip, not the fact that you're
filling in with undef.

Luke

Fwd: zip: stop when and where?

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