Metathread - Programs I would love to write

Hi all,

I have not had much luck lately trying to suggest feature improvements
I would like to see in Perl. Usually discussions get derailed on small
technicalities of why my particular proposed solution has a small
defect in it, totally missing the overarching point of why I want such
a feature in the first place.

Therefore, I'm going to try a new approach. What follows is a series of
posts on an overall theme of "Here is a program I would love to write"
but currently I cannot, ultimately due to some problem that is within
p5p's domain to fix (i.e. I don't believe any of these are "just fix
it in a CPAN module"). I hope to demonstrate a use-case for each feature
I believe needs adding/changing.

We have in the past made breaking changes that somehow annoyed
back-compat; to name a few examples

  * The defined-or // operator broke empty-regexp as "previous
    match"

  * Hash randomization broke many test scripts that previously presumed
    deterministic behaviour

  * Removal of . in @INC caused all sorts of upsets

In each case, the change was eventually justified despite these
problems, because the benefits were judged to outweigh them. In my
following posts, I hope to be able to provide sufficient motivation
that we would consider each change as useful enough to make.

-- 
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

leonerd@leonerd.org.uk      |  https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/  |  https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/

• Metathread - Programs I would love to write by Paul "LeoNerd" Evans