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Re: [perl #126715] Deprecate barewords?

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From:
Abigail
Date:
November 23, 2015 18:09
Subject:
Re: [perl #126715] Deprecate barewords?
Message ID:
20151123180923.GA3263@almanda.fritz.box
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 10:00:59AM -0800, Ed Avis via RT wrote:
> >I'd say issue a deprecation warning once we have a schedule were the feature is removed, and replaced by something else.
> 
> I think in the case of barewords the replacement feature has been present in Perl for a while...
> 
> Instead of 
> 
>     print hello;
> 
> you should, in the new way of doing things, write
> 
>     print 'hello';

Bad example. The first one writes $_ to the handle named hello, the
second one write the string 'hello' to the current default filehandle.

> >Deprecation does not mean "I don't like the style, so other shall not use it".
> 
> Indeed not.  It may however be a case of: nobody whatsoever uses
> this style, and so it is not doing any good to keep it (while it does
> cruft up the language somewhat).  Hence this request.  To reiterate:
> I am *asking* whether anybody uses barewords.  If they are still used,
> then close this bug and keep them.


But you will never know who does, or does not, use this style. And
asking on p5p just reaches the tiniest fraction of Perl programmers --
you may reach more Perl programmers by just asking random people at
a large train station.


And by all means, if you have good reasons why this syntax should be
outlawed, (because there's this awesome new feature you want to implement,
or it speeds up perl significantly, or ...), raise them, and discuss them.

Just issueing a mandatory warning only annoys people, but doesn't
remove the feature.

I'm not opposed removing this feature if there're good reasons. I'm 
just not thrilled about a warning for the sake of having a warning.


Abigail

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