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Postings from July 2012
On Thu Jul 05 20:36:01 2012, perl.p5p@rjbs.manxome.org wrote:
> * Ricardo Signes <perl.p5p@rjbs.manxome.org> [2012-06-25T20:38:46]
> > It seems open to change. The question is: what's the cost, and
> what's the
> > benefit?
>
> I think the feature seems low in both cost and benefit, with the key
> difference
> that once we allow "my();" we will be hard pressed to disallow it
> later, if we
> realize we should,
Realize we should make lists inconsistent? See below.
> as we'll be breaking something. I'm not entirely
> opposed to
> breaking code at the edges of sanity, but it sounds like there's very
> little
> practical argument to make this edge case permitted. Allowing "my()"
> won't
> really make it act like "normal" built-ins. It will make it a little
> more like
> one, but not enough to be worth even the relatively small risk of
> future
> headaches.
I hope you are still open to remonstration. perldata says:
The null list is represented by (). Interpolating it in a list
has no effect.
But what it says is not true of my($a,(),$b) even though
my($a,($b,((((($c))))))) works.
So things *are* inconsistent in that case. my() does not allow a list
of variables in the usual Perl sense, but a list consisting of
variables, and possibly sublists of variables, possibly with the + unary
operator, but no nested empty lists.
I still fail to see how that exception is a good thing.
I would consider any case where the implementation of () (an actual op
in its own right, as opposed to nothingness) leaks out to be a bug. ()
is supposed to be nothingness; the fact that it cannot be implemented
that way for technical reasons only leaks out with my()/our()/local().
> As for the "this was made legal in 1999, but failed because of a
> separate
> issue," that may be the case, but I don't believe it was really done
> deliberately.
The grammar already allowed it before that, but it was made more
explicit when the myterm rule had to be separated from term, for
attributes to work.
--
Father Chrysostomos
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