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Postings from July 2012
* Darin McBride <dmcbride@cpan.org> [2012-07-08 16:15]:
> On Sunday July 8 2012 8:02:21 AM Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> > * Darin McBride <dmcbride@cpan.org> [2012-07-08 06:50]:
> > > On Sunday July 8 2012 6:42:58 AM Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> > > > Why would the last example here be the odd one out? What makes
> > > > an empty list so abhorrent in the vicinity of `my` that unlike
> > > > anywhere else in Perl, there it has to be forbidden?
> > >
> > > Personal opinion, but "my ()" makes no semantic sense even if it
> > > makes syntactical sense.
> >
> > What about its semantics is nonsensical? It seems perfectly
> > well-defined to me, the concept of “zero” is not exactly novel.
>
> Well-defined != sensical.
>
> Basically, you're saying that its syntax makes sense (well-defined),
> and using that to question my claim that it makes no semantic sense
> when I already conceded that it may make syntactical sense.
I am not questioning. I just asked to make sure I didn’t miss a subtler
argument, instead of a simple unobjectionable one in which the specific
technical meanings of “semantic” and “syntactic” were confused.
(“Semantic” does not mean “makes sense”.)
(Fine, multiplying by 1 makes sense in Perl. How far does that go? Does
$x * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 make sense too?)
> foo() for ();
>
> This statement doesn't make much sense. However, it's simply the same as:
>
> foo() for (@list)
>
> where @list is empty.
No it isn’t, and allowing the latter does not necessitate allowing the
former. In fact, other than on the RHS of an assignment when clearing
a list, there is practically nowhere that writing `()` is ever sensible
in Perl (discounting the use of parens to call a sub when not passing
arguments; and in fact they are only required for method calls). Yet you
can sprinkle it just about everywhere. Shouldn’t
($foo, (), $bar, (), $baz) = 1..3;
be an error?
> And, Eric, not that I have much say in the matter, but I'd find
> a simple comment "# no arguments" or even an empty prototype, to be
> a clearer way to document a lack of arguments ;-)
I agree that seems a way to confound (novices especially) more than to
enlighten. Also please do not use prototypes for that.
Regards,
--
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
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