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Postings from July 2009
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Ben Morrow<ben@morrow.me.uk> wrote: > Quoth Peter@PSDT.com (Peter Scott): >> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:28:14 -0700, Chip Salzenberg wrote: >> >> > This is an amusing discussion. >> > >> > The only problem that I observe with scalar split writing to @_ >> > implicitly is that it's an easy thing to do by accident and is almost >> > never useful. Therefore, removing it seems a public service. >> > >> > I favor simply making it a compile-time error to use split in scalar >> > context. No problem with silently changing semantics and no more >> > surprising behavior. Everybody's happy. (right?) >> >> I don't get it. The docs say that scalar split returns the number of >> elements. That's useful and convenient, and more intuitive than some of >> the alternative gyrations that have been suggested. No one cares about it >> shoving the contents in @_ or wants that to continue, especially since it >> results in a warning. So why can't we make it return the number of >> elements without either populating @_ or generating a warning? > > One good reason might be: someone who writes something on 5.12, and > doesn't know the history of scalar split, will get a nasty surprise when > they run that code on <=5.10. perldoc bytes; # doesn't mention that it doesn't work in 5.6 Another way around that may satisfy all people except implementer :) : * code without `no (strict|warnings) 'scalar split';` or `use 5.######` (where change is implemented) issue die or warning that says: your code uses split in scalar context. In perl 5.x.y and earlier that causes @_ to be overwritten, either don't use it or define minimal perl version required using 'use 5.######'. That's it. -- Best regards, Ruslan.Thread Previous | Thread Next