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Postings from January 2022
On Monday, 24 January 2022, 15:59:55 CET, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk> wrote:
> Ovid via perl5-porters <perl5-porters@perl.org> wrote:
> >
> > Imagine if we had a $^NUM_ARGS
> > variable (terrible name, though I think someone else suggested it):
> >
> > sub name ( $self, $name=undef ) {
> > if ( $^NUM_ARGS == 2) {
> > $self->{name} = $name; # even if undef
> > }
> > else {
> > return $self->{name};
> > }
> > }
>
> I've often suggested it as `argc` or variations thereon:
<snip>
>
> https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2021/12/msg262142.html
>
> Dave M has rather strongly objected to it:
As an aside, but something we might want to keep in mind for future work, many languages simply don't have this issue because of method overloading:
public void someMethod ( int number ) {
// do something
}
public void someMethod ( int number, String name ) {
// do something else
}
public void someMethod ( int Number, SomeClass obj ) {
// do something else
}
It's clean, easy to read, and handles dispatching nicely. Of course, ambiguities can arise and in the Java examples above, dispatching is based on the number of arguments *and* the type of arguments.
Allowing this in Perl would be a win because, IMHO, it's easier to read and matches existing, well-known conventions in other languages:
method name () { return $name }
# or method name :multi () { return $name }
method name ( $new_name ) { $name = $new_name }
# or method name :multi ( $new_name ) { $name = $new_name }
No, I'm not suggesting we do that, but this is (to me) much easier to follow. If types get incorporated at some point in the future, I have a ton of code that could be simplified by dispatching on type rather than if/else blocks. Overloading methods/subs allows us to have logically separated blocks of code for logically separate things.
Again, this is not a suggestion or a recommendation, but something to keep in mind. I'm happy to see signatures get out the door in their current state.
Best,
Ovid
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