use Perl

• Eenhhhhh. (Score:1)

  by Aristotle (5147) <pagaltzis@gmx.de> on 2007.12.24 12:46 (#59691) Homepage Journal

  I don’t see why we’re being forced to write the outer deref. It could be much simpler:

  push $hash->{key}, 42;

  Much nicer than autoboxing, too.

  There’s never any more or less of a guarantee that $hash->{key} will be an array-ref anyway, regardless of which way you write it. There's never any ambiguity there either. The current rule is just arbitrary outgrowth of the prototype brain damage. A better way to approach the problem that prototypes attack would have been to provide a prefix notation for binary operators and then declare push et al an operator.

  I had hoped that autoboxing would at least give me something close to that by means of indirect object syntax:

  push $hash->{key} 42; # note the missing comma

  However, no dice. I can find no way to convince Perl to parse something that starts out like a plain push invocation as an indirect object method call instead. It always complains that something is wrong before it gets to the end of the expression.

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:2)

    by schwern (1528)

    You were starting to get into the grievance thing at the end there.