From: Chris Uppal <chris.uppal@...>
Date: 2003-12-02T21:47:08+09:00
Subject: Re: anything disappearing from Ruby for 2.0?

John W. Long wrote:

> > > > I want to add the observation that the Perlisms in Ruby were
> > > > a major (perhaps
> > > > *the* major) factor that put me off the language when I
> > > > looked at it a year or
> > > > so ago.
> [...]
> Why have you not looked into perl? Or even ruby for that matter?

Um... Am I misunderstanding you ?   I *have* looked at Ruby, I think that there
is much that is of value there, but there are some aspects I don't like
(speaking here, again, as an outsider) and which put me off it.

I have also looked at Perl -- about every two years since Perl 2 (or so), and
recoiled in baffled horror each time.

>I admit
> when I first started working with ruby the $1, $2, $3 variables seemed a
> bit strange, but after working with them I can certainly say it is a
> feature that is both useful and understandable.

I'm a long time UNIX programmer, so the '$' variables, don't seem specially
*strange*, I just don't think they have any place in a language that *I* want
to use for *my* purposes.  I'm very familar with shell programming, so I speak
{k,ba,}sh + awk + <whatever> happily, and feel no need for a scripting language
to replace that combo; what I would like to find is a flexible, properly
dynamic, totally OO, reasonably scaleable, language for use in contexts where
I'm not being obliged to use C++ or Java, and where I'm not able to use my
preferred Smalltalk.  Ruby *so nearly* fits the bill -- kinda fustrating ;-)

> Do you do much with
> regular expressions? This is where the perl variables shine:

To be honest, I see very little value in regexps as a syntactic language
feature (as opposed to being in a standard library).  I don't *object* to it,
but it doesn't seem to buy much in return for the extra complexity.  (And, too,
if the regexps are given their own syntax, then there's a tempation to try to
make all features of regexps available as syntax, rather than just the subset
that is easy to read).  Of course, that is partly a reflection of my own
programming (outside a scripting context) where I've tended to find that using
regexps is a short-cut that I eventually regret.

    -- chris