Front page | perl.bootstrap |
Postings from July 2000
Re: perl 6 requirements
From:
Chaim Frenkel
Date:
July 31, 2000 11:40
Subject:
Re: perl 6 requirements
Message ID:
m31z0annxn.fsf@csamnycln01.nyc.csam.com
>>>>> "s" == skud <skud@netizen.com.au> writes:
s> 1) quote a section of the ASCII text version of the document, in normal
s> email quoting style, or
Language
-> Obsolete Features
-> 1. Formats are not commonly used ....
I'm sorry where did this come from. I use formats regularly and quite
usefully.
I suspect that those folks that haven't gone through the grist of
COBOL or some other mainframe reporting language just don't get how
useful it really is.
Unless you replace it with something better. (Postscript or TeX or ...)
You'll have a hard time finding something that makes life so easy.
(Reply privately. But has any of the internal boys had to twiddle
format code in a long while? (The only comment I recall is when
lexical variables weren't visible to formats). And is it complex
down in there?)
Language
-> Unixcentrism
-> 1.PROBLEM: localtime's behaviour is non-intuitive for non-Unix people
How can this be changed and still preserve any semblence of backward
compatiblity?
(I've always wondered is why it is 'non-intuitive'? If 0 == January is
a problem. What do they do to translate day-of-week? Is it Monday
based or Sunday based. Don't they have to read the documentation?)
I'd also add (involving aspects of QA and Documentation)
Perl should be fully specified. No accidental edge cases. How to handle
system dependencies (or those point where Larry doesn't want to make perl
machine independent) is left as an excersize.
<chaim>
--
Chaim Frenkel Nonlinear Knowledge, Inc.
chaimf@pobox.com +1-718-236-0183