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Postings from April 2021
On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 09:48:09 -0500
"B. Estrade" <brett@cpanel.net> wrote:
> First, I am sorry for being *that* guy with neilb's email. I'll read
> more carefully in the future.
>
> On to the subject of the email. Since really learning about the
> primary use case for sub prototypes, I've been trying to determine if
> one could use it - or something - to use current perl to define an
> infix operator.
>
> I decided to search CPAN (duh) and found Sub::Infix. It satisfies
> what I would imagine such a native capability would provide. Even
> better, it's on CPAN.
>
> Is there a deficiency in this approach that requires time being spent
> on other solutions? A person owns their time, so no judgment. I am
> just wondering if this was even known or considered?
>
> https://metacpan.org/pod/Sub::Infix
To quote its docs:
> Sub::Infix creates fake infix operators using overloading.
Its own synopsis has:
# Operator needs to be defined (or imported) at compile time.
BEGIN { *plus = infix { $_[0] + $_[1] } };
my $five = 2 |plus| 3;
Not wishing to turn this mail into a long critique of Sub::Infix, but
that's a) terrible, and b) about the best you can do from Pure Perl.
Basically you can only have identifier-named operators and they have to
be surrounded by |pipes|.
...
> Finally, I'd like to suggest that if having an easy way to add infix
> operators in Perl is indeed a potential for game changing features
> exploration, we should make an official call to any interested part
> to; using Sub::Infix to submit any number of trial infix operators by
> publishing them on CPAN (even under some Trial:: type of name space,
> or not). And we can go from there. If this is _good enough_ to test
> the efficacy of different infix options, is Sub::Infix not something
> that we could use to rapidly prototype them? And better still, maybe
> someone will figure out Sub::Infix::Tiny (bonus points if so). And
> maybe we'll discover a) Sub::Infix is perfect and should be promoted
> to "dual life" or generate new ideas to test in this way (e.g., CPAN
> 'feature' Challenge).
I already have a much better way to do these; my upcoming
XS::Parse::Infix. That allows this - taken from the unit tests of
Syntax::Operator::Equ:
ok( "abc" equ "abc", 'identical strings');
ok(!("abc" equ "def"), 'different strings');
ok( 123 === 123, 'identical strings');
ok(!(123 === 456), 'different strings');
Notice a) the lack of |pipes| and b) the use of non-identifier
operators; ie. the ===.
This technique is more powerful still; it can create hyperoperators as
well (i.e. operators that work on other syntax, such as other
operators). This from Syntax::Operator::In:
ok( "c" in<eq> ("a".."e") , 'c is in a..e');
ok(not("f" in<eq> ("a".."e")), 'f is not in a..e');
--
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
leonerd@leonerd.org.uk | https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ | https://www.tindie.com/stores/leonerd/
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