remove ambiguity from operators

On 2013-04-20 02:27, Ben Morrow wrote on c.l.p.misc:

 > the bitops' behaviour is *not* consistent with the rest of Perl.
 > Unlike some languages, the + operator (for instance) does not choose
 > to be 'addition' or 'concatenation' based on the dynamic types of its
 > arguments; instead, it always coerces its arguments to numbers and
 > performs addition. Similarly, Perl has separate == and eq equality
 > operators which coerce their arguments to number or string. The
 > bitwise ops should have been implemented the same way,
 > with &, |, ^ and ~ always coercing their arguments to numbers
 > and (say) ba, bo, bx and bn always coercing them to strings.

What is needed to get rid of this anomaly? Is it worth it?

It should of course be optional, for example via "use strict 'bitops';".

   my $char = "X";

   my $flip = "A" ^ "a";
   $char ^= $flip;

   my $flip = "A" bx "a";
   $char bx= $flip;

   my $flip = "A" bit_xor "a";
   $char bit_xor= $flip;

-- 
Ruud

• remove ambiguity from operators by Dr.Ruud
• Re: remove ambiguity from operators by John Imrie
• use string; (was: Re: remove ambiguity from operators) by Dr.Ruud