Phoenix.pm: quoting constant hash keys survey

Scott Walters scott at illogics.org
Sat Apr 17 11:54:37 CDT 2004


String concat has been renamed ~ from _. . is method call. Primitive
types "autobox" now, so you can ask an array for a length or a hash
for its keys:

  %hash.keys  # method call

So, people have adopted the dot for method calls, and JavaScript uses the
dot for both method calls and hash subscripts (as well as array indices),
but since we could be either calling a method or subscripting a primitive,
we have to tell perl which it is or risk confusion when we can't access
hash subscripts with the same name as methods.

-scott

On  0, eden li <eden.li at asu.edu> wrote:
> 
> I like it, but I don't see why perl can't just adopt the dot like Java and C.
> 
> %foo.bar -> %foo{'bar'}
> 
> I guess could be ambiguously parsed as a string concat operator:
> 
> (%foo) . bar()
> 
> But I'm wondering if %foo can exist in that context all by itself in Perl6.  Anyway, either way, I'm all for typing less.  Besides, gullimets seem to stand out more than they should, especially for every hash access in which you don't feel like typing quotes.
> 
> Scott Walters wrote:
> > Okey, everyone run and vote - yea or nay. Let's hear it. Even if your
> > reasons are unfounded, vote.
> 



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