[Omaha.pm] Re: [oma-python] an almost-switch statement

[Jay Hannah]

[For the record, thehaas drug me into a Perl discussion on this list. I  
tried not to mention Perl at all... -grin-]

On Jun 1, 2004, at 4:19 PM, thehaas at binary.net wrote:
> I've used Perl quite a bit. Never used anonymous subroutines because
> the syntax is ugly.

It is? From example:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/ 
node6.html#SECTION006750000000000000000

Python:

$ python
 >>> def make_incrementor(n):
...     return lambda x: x + n
...
 >>> f = make_incrementor(42)
 >>> f(0)
42
 >>> f(1)
43

I couldn't figure out how to do *exactly* that in Perl. I'm not sure I  
understand when you'd want to. You can skip the def step in Perl (I  
don't know if you could skip the def step in Python if your wanted to)  
thusly:

$ perl -de 1
DB<1> $f = sub { $_[0] + 42 }
DB<2> p &$f(0)
42
DB<3> p &$f(1)
43

> OO in Perl is even uglier.

Indeed, it can be. I like Perl OO, but it certainly doesn't have native  
cascading public/private attribute inheritance. You can do it (and we  
do... a lot...), but it is ugly.

> Will Perl 6 ever get out? ;)

At OSCON 2003 Larry Wall and Damian Conway were talking about 2007.  
Parrot it coming along, apparently...

j

P.S. Contrary to my last post, Perl has a "Switch" module I didn't know  
about:

    http://search.cpan.org/~rgarcia/Switch-2.10/Switch.pm

It's distributed in core Perl nowadays, so "use Switch" should be  
available by default.