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Re: Deprecation plans

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From:
Abigail
Date:
January 16, 2017 15:09
Subject:
Re: Deprecation plans
Message ID:
20170116150732.GB24453@almanda.fritz.box
On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 03:53:49PM +0100, Leon Timmermans wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 11:50 AM, Sawyer X <xsawyerx@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Abigail clued me in on the oversight.
> >
> > $* and $# have lost their "magic" characteristic back in 5.10. That is
> > why they fell off the radar and $[ was considered for a proper
> > deprecation and fatalization cycle.
> >
> > On 5.16 $[ was changed so if you call "use v5.16" or "no feature
> > 'array_base'" $[ simply has no effect, although you can still set it to
> > 0. This means that it, unless you apply the previously mentioned pragma
> > calls, this variable still has usage, and this is why it *must* go
> > through a deprecation cycle and why we noted that. I think there's
> > probably little value in calling fatal on $* and $# since they have no
> > usage (in any form) from 5.10. However, for cleanliness sense, and to
> > allow us to communicate for certain that we don't accept it (and allow
> > us to possibly make a new use of them in the future), we might as well
> > fatalize them as well. I think a deprecation cycle of warning before
> > fatalizing would be better, in case anyone has them still in older
> > scripts that somehow passed an upgrade to 5.10 and above without
> > breaking. (I'm honestly not sure how likely that is, but we're not in a
> > rush anyway with them.)
> >
> 
> I don't think there's any value anymore in fatalizing $# and $* at this
> point. Besides, fatalizing them breaks my favorite perl/postscript script
> ever [1] ;-) (by Book of course).



It frees up two punctuation variables for future use.



Abigail

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