From: Rudolf Polzer <AntiATField_adsgohere@...>
Date: 2003-01-26T00:51:27+09:00
Subject: Re: wait for more perl programmers! (Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?)

Scripsit ille aut illa Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org>:
> In message "Re: wait for more perl programmers! (Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?)"
>     on 03/01/25, David Garamond <davegaramond@icqmail.com> writes:
> 
> |>   * discourage use of symbol variables (e.g. $/, etc.) in manual
> |>   * discourage use of Perlish features by giving warnings.
> |
> |hm, i wonder what is the list of features that the author (matz?) decide 
> |as perlish and should be discouraged.
> 
>  * symbol variables

This probably also includes $1 etc, doesn't it?

>  * regexp in conditional expression

What's that? Just things like

  if str =~ /regexp/
    # ...
  end

or do you just mean REs applied to $_?

>  * range (../...) in conditonal expression

I never really understood these in Perl, anyway - and if there is one
thing I do not like it's a side effect in an operator to itself. For example,

  def foo(bar)
    42.times() do |count|
      foo(nil) if bar
      if (count == 17) .. (count == 23)
        p count
      end
    end
  end
  foo(17)

It does what it looks like and shows that ".." creates two internal
variables here: one for the inner and one for the outer call. One can make
this as confusing as one wants by using more procedures, iterators etc.

I'd like this much better:

  rop = RangeOp.new()
  # ...
    if rop[count == 17, count == 23]
      p count
    end

or even

  rop = RangeOp.new() do
    count == 17, count == 23
  end
  # ...
    if rop.test()
      p count
    end

maybe

  rop = RangeOp.new() do |c|
    c == 17, c == 23
  end
  # ...
    if rop.test(count)
      p count
    end

because it's much clearer and it's obvious where the temporary is.
Additionally, this "RangeOp" can be implemented completely in Ruby,
so the interpreter doesn't need to support it.


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