From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-08-04T23:25:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Should this work?


----- Original Message -----
From: "ts" <decoux@moulon.inra.fr>


> G> [x, y, z].map { $_ << [nil] }     # -> [nil, nil, nil]
>
> [...]
>
> G> What do people think?
>
>  Have you used a P language ? :-)
>
>
> Guy Decoux
>

A "Perl" language?  Yes.  I'm not very proficient, because it seems
practically impossible to do anything in Perl and remain sane.  However, it
is a very clever, creative, quirky and interesting language.  Some of the
solutions in "The Perl Cookbook" are remarkable for their elegance.
However, that elegance is "read-only".  Mere mortals cannot usually know
what magic Perl interpreter will accept.

In short, I love Perl, but never use it.

*Anyway*, despite all that, my affection for the

   [x, y, z].map { $_ << [nil] }     # -> [nil, nil, nil]

construct is based not on Perl (despite the $_), but on Miranda (similar to
Haskell).  For example:

   fib n = # Definition of Fibonacci sequence

   map fib [1..10]       # -> [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]


In Ruby, since :map/:collect most commonly takes only one parameter in the
block, it could be unambiguously shortcut using a magic local variable.  I
definitely think my "capitalize" example was overdoing it, as it relies on
dodgy Perl $_ overuse, rather than plain old functional programming.

--Gavin