use Perl

• other languages (Score:1)

  by mary.poppins (3530)

  There is another class of languages besides Perl, Java, and C++: statically-typed functional languages. In particular, ocaml [ocaml.org] hits a terseness/performance spot that is great for many applications in my opinion, including most current uses of C++.
  
  Also, ocaml's option type is way better than perl's undef. We hates undef!
  • Re:other languages (Score:2)

    by Ovid (2709)

    I think undef would be fantastic if Perl better supported three-value logic. Right now we have true or false. If Perl natively supported "true", "false" and "unknown", many problems could be made simpler.

    I did allude to other paradigms (logic programming, to be specific), but I confess that I don't know much about OCaml.
    • Re:other languages (Score:1)

      by mary.poppins (3530)

      My unhappiness with undef is that I can never remember whether my functions return undef or not, and what the behavior of the function is when given an undef arg, etc.. In the end, I always end up having to write comments.
      
      Ocaml has a nice distinction between a type "foo" and a type "foo option" -- the latter can be undef, whereas the former is guaranteed to have a value:
      
      let succ_int i = i + 1;;
      let succ_int_option o = match o with
      | None -> 0
      | Some i -> i + 1;;
      
      • Re:other languages (Score:2)

        by Ovid (2709)

        Keep to a strict convention and it's easier to remember. Don't return undef or a false value when you mean false, just return. A bare return will return undef in scalar context and an empty list in list context. By keeping to this convention, you can simplify your code. If you're returning from a ternary operator, use parens:

        return;
        # or
        return $val ? defined $val : ();

        Personally, I usually return as soon as I know a function will fail and I don't get to the ternary operator too often (though that's n
• Just to pick... (Score:2)

  by Purdy (2383)

  In your post, you have a few arg's on why Java has problems. IMHO, you weaken your argument when you say things like:

  Java languished for a long time without regular expressions.

  That's past tense - it doesn't matter unless the current set of regular expression functionality isn't stable or as fully-featured. If it is, say that, instead of talking about how Perl was great against Java v1.0 (or whatever).
  
  I liked how one /. poster [slashdot.org] said:

  The regular expression support of languages like Python, Ruby, and even
• few times (Score:1)

  by Qiang (5577)

  few times i don't see people bashing perl on slashdot. this is one of them. is perl 6 development shutting down those trolls or what ;-)