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Postings from August 2008
* Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com> [2008-08-27 00:25]: > I do hate (ok, enjoy not one blinkin' bit) explaining that > "\t" and '\t' differ, but that m/\t/ and m'\t' do not, or > that "\U$a" and '\U$a' differ, but unlike the \t case where > m// doesn't matter, m/\U$a/ and m'\U$a' indeed differ. I know > why. You know why. But I get queasy trying to cleanly explain > it off the cuff. Or cough. Well, yes. Layered quoting is terribly hard to get right for most people. (I happen to have some cognitive quirks that largely (but not entirely) exempt me from this, but I know that my case is rare indeed.) This is why Perl 6 is hoisting patterns into a fully first-class part of the language syntax; whereas in Perl 5, far greater recognition though they may be granted compared to other languages, they aren’t quite entirely emancipated. But that is neither here nor there. Instead, I have to note that with this observation, we have come full circle: the very fact that layered quoting is so difficult to cognitively process would seem to be an argument against interpolative interfaces. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>Thread Previous | Thread Next