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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Simplicity (was Smalltalk vs Perl) 4 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • What I guess James doesn't know, or doesn't realize, is that in the case of @, % and $, they are actually meant to *help* readability. If a newb sees @, he knows it's an array. If he sees %, he knows it's a hash, etc.

    To an extent, this is very true. If you have some experience programming.

    But, if you don't have any/much experience programming... then this gets very confusing:

    $hash{element}

    Because a newbie sees the sigil and thinks: scalar

    Then along comes:

    $hash

    And he thinks: same scalar

    And it takes

    • But the sigil is right: $hash{element} and $hash are both scalars. I don't have a huge issue teaching this because most people get it once they know the rule: $ is one thing, @ can be many things, and % is a hash. I emphasize those points, and it works.

      Most people we teach don't get $hash and $hash{element} confused either. One doesn't have a curly brace after it. This is another thing we emphasize, and we find it very easy to teach.

      I can see the problem for people who teach themselves Perl from the wrong sources, though, but I've taught a lot of non-computer-science people Perl, and this hasn't been one of the things they get confused about.
      • Most people we teach don't get $hash and $hash{element} confused either. One doesn't have a curly brace after it. This is another thing we emphasize, and we find it very easy to teach.

        Yep. Makes perfect sense to me. I agree totally.

        But... I've got some customers that, after a week, still couldn't tell the difference between those two variables. They (mostly) get the scalar / hash thing... and getting an element of a hash.

        But as soon as you give them (the scalar and the hash) both the same name, they fre
        • Well, we explicitly tell them that you can have different variable types with the same name. When we introduced arrays and hashes, we hammer this into their heads.

          You already know they are going to have trouble with that stuff, so you head it off before they have a chance to get confused. :)
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