develooper Front page | perl.fwp | Postings from April 2012

Re: Secret operators: the documentation

Thread Previous | Thread Next
From:
Michael R . Wolf
Date:
April 6, 2012 18:26
Subject:
Re: Secret operators: the documentation
Message ID:
A008EE39-4F90-4CF0-99EC-9F2DF7BA2374@att.net
On Mar 16, 2012, at 4:44 AM, Philippe Bruhat (BooK) wrote:

> A few years back, I started to write a manual page about Perl secret operators,
> with the goal of getting it into the official Perl documentation at some point.



A few comments…

1.  It would be nice to do a bit of documentation on *why* or *how* some of these work.  Perhaps a Deparse would be sufficient (as in Eskimo greeting), but English is also a good tool.

For starters, I didn't figure out how "Ornate double-bladed sword worked".  I'm sure I could have created the trail alone, but it would be nice to follow someone else's blaze.

2. Given how dangerous this one could be (to a psyche) if researched deeply (years of therapy…)

 =( )=        Goatse                      scalar / list context
 
I'd suggest another name -- Saturn.  Yes, snicker if you will.  Saturn *is* the son of the Greek deity Uranus, but that's only a 2nd order, inside joke.  The operator looks like Saturn, even when spaces are inserted (as will be likely with syntax formatting editors or perltidy(1))!    

=( )=        Saturn                       scalar / list context
= ( ) =      Saturn                       scalar / list context

Keep the old name if you wish, but add one that's more psychologically healthy, too!!!  (P.S.  Thanks for the warning.  That's just plain *responsible* behavior to the community!!!  One image could ruin someone's whole view of Perl.)

Michael

-- 
Michael R. Wolf
    All mammals learn by playing!
        MichaelRWolf@att.net




Thread Previous | Thread Next


nntp.perl.org: Perl Programming lists via nntp and http.
Comments to Ask Bjørn Hansen at ask@perl.org | Group listing | About