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Postings from November 2010
On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 09:27:50AM +0100, Rafael Garcia-Suarez wrote: > On 24 November 2010 08:57, Zefram <zefram@fysh.org> wrote: > > In discussing (on #p5p) possible new operators, we ran into the issue > > that the obscure ?PATTERN? syntax gets in the way of most uses we could > > potentially make of the question mark. It was proposed that we could > > deprecate that syntax to reclaim the question mark. Attached patch > > does so. It leaves the match-once semantics still available through > > m?PATTERN?. > > I'd be a bit nostalgic of this venerable piece of sed-like syntax, but > I would not object to the deprecation. > > Can you give an example of future usage of "?" you were thinking about ? I suggest we first have some actual cases where having "?" is a hindrance. IIRC, in a recent situation where it was a "hindrance" it was that in the many proposed names for the '&&->' operator, '->?' would conflict with existing syntax. But there were enough other possibilities left for many rounds of bikeshedding. I did not get the impression ?PATTERN? really stood in the way of progess. I do not have much love for ?PATTERN?, which, except for some obfuscation, I have never used, nor have I encoutered it on code I had to maintain. But this smells a bit like deprecation for the sake of deprecation, and that always makes me uneasy. AbigailThread Previous | Thread Next