use Perl

• ASCII, car/cdr (Score:1)

  by jrockway (7171)

  First, the ASCII issue. PHP, Ruby, Perl 5.6, etc., etc. don't support Unicode. Those saw plenty of use anyway. (PG mentions on his site that people wouldn't have complained about this if he hadn't brought it up. I agree; this is whining about the bikeshed color.)
  
  Next, car and cdr. Most LISP programmers I've talked to (including myself), prefer car and cdr to head and tail or first and rest. First, head/tail and first/rest don't make much sense when applied to an improper list (i.e. (cons 1 2)). car/c
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by schwern (1528)

    Was that reply a joke? I hope it was, but in case it wasn't...

    PHP, Ruby, Perl 5.6, etc., etc. don't support Unicode. Those saw plenty of use anyway.

    Perl 5.6 does support Unicode... badly, but it does support it. And what was one of the major things we put into 5.8 (begun in 2000) despite it causing vast amounts of internals grief? Unicode. Also keep in mind that 5.6 development started in 1998 when you could still fool yourself that ASCII was all you needed. Even so, the diverse array of Perl developers recognized it was necessary even if it was very painful.
    
    It's not that Arc doesn't s
    • Re:ASCII, car/cdr (Score:1)

      by chromatic (983) on 2008.02.01 3:23 (#60826) Homepage Journal

      Even English speaking programmers in the UK for example have to talk with the rest of Europe.

      English speaking programmers in the UK who want to get paid have to deal with the Euro symbol, which isn't in ASCII. They can't fall back on the pound symbol either.

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      • Re:ASCII pedantry (Score:2)

        by grantm (164)

        Actually, programmers in the UK are more likely to be paid in British pounds. Of course the symbol for that (£) isn't ASCII either. Even Americans can't render the symbol for cents (¢) without venturing outside ASCII.