Dave's Brain

Browse - tech opinion - perl6 suggestions

Date: 2009jun24

Q.  Got any Perl 6 suggestions?

A.  Perl 5 is great but some things just make no sense.

1.  Parameters passing

You can not do:

	sub myfunc($a, $b, $c)
	{
		print $a, $b, $c;
	}

You must do:

	sub myfunc($$$)
	{
		my($a, $b, $c) = @_;

		print $a, $b, $c;
	}

Its redundant!  You have to say the types of the parameters twice.
And its error prone.

2.  All code must be in braces.

You can not do:

	if ($something) print "Hello\n";

Instead, you must do:

	if ($something) { print "Hello\n"; }

No other common language make you do that.

3.  Array element access.

If you have:

	my(@a);

You access elements like this:

	print $a[5];

More sensible would be:

	print @a[5];

4.  Perl has a great variety of ways to quote but one that's missing
is a heredoc that does not interpret variables.  For example:

	use strict;
	print <<EOF;
see you @the movie
EOF

Will give an error because their is no array called @the
Maybe using a single quote (') could mean: don't interpret.

	print <<'EOF;
see you @the movie
EOF

5.  Offical true and false.
I am don't like using 1 and 0.

6.  A === operator for comparing references.
Like javaScript has.

7.  A real switch statement like C has.  But actually not requiring the break
would be better.  Want:

	Old code:

	if ($a eq 'one') { print "ONE"; }
	elsif ($a eq 'two') { print "TWO"; }
	elsif ($a eq 'three') { print "THREE"; }

	Proposed code:

	switch($a)
	{
	case "one":print "ONE";
	case "two": print "TWO";
	case "three": { print "THREE"; }	# Brackets are optional
	}

8.  More comments /* */  and //

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