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Postings from September 2000
>>>>> "Casey" == Casey R Tweten <crt@kiski.net> writes:
Casey> I agree with this line of thinking, however, I suppose I don't
Casey> agree with implementing length in this way since we already
Casey> have C<scalar>.
Casey> In that light, if C<length> is to replace scalar for, we'll
Casey> say, LISTs, then lets remove C<scalar> since it will be
Casey> effectivley defunct.
Uh, no. It provides a scalar context. For only a few kinds of things
that return lists in lists context, do they return the LENGTH of that
list in a scalar context. Most other things have much more
interesting return values in a scalar context, and a few have nothing
but undef. I just had this discussion on Usenet... please go Deja
comp.lang.perl.misc. In fact, you can't get "scalar" in front of a
list. It doesn't exist. It can't *ever* exist.
This also means that
length XXXXX
is not the same as
length scalar XXXXX
but rather, specialcased VERY SPECIFICALLY for
length @FOO
This is what I don't like about this proposal. It raises more
eyebrows than it fixes. I like the suggestion that it be a warning,
and leave it at that.
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