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Postings from December 2004
In article <20041130213536.GC30391@wall.org>,
larry@wall.org (Larry Wall) wrote:
>Here's the proposal.
>First the bad news:
> * We accept that the C<< < >> operator requires whitespace
> around it, and be prepared to be burned in effigy occasionally.
I wouldn't go that far, although when I inevitably get burned by it,
I might let slip some intemperate comparisons regarding whitespace and
programming in Python... =)
> * That means that, roughly, we have this proportion:
> '...' : "..." :: <...> : «...»
I wasn't sure at first, but I think you just sold me. (I'm a sucker
for parallels.)
> * The :w splitting happens after interpolation. So
> « foo $bar @baz »
> can end up with lots of words, while
> « foo "$bar" "@baz" »
> is guaranteed to end up with three "words".
Now I'm a bit lost. I would've expected the quotes (") inside a
different kind of quote («) to be taken literally (just as in 'foo
"$bar" "@baz"' or qw/foo "$bar" "@baz"/).
I'm not even sure what those double-quotation marks are doing --
preventing $bar from being interpolated as a variable, or preventing
the interpolated value from being white-split?
(Of course, to keep the pattern going, I'd propose < for no
interpolation, << for interpolation (but not subsequent splitting), and
introduce <<< for going whole-hog and interpolating *with* subsequent
splitting. (Not that I'm saying I'd actually ever use <<<triple
quotes>>>, I just wanted to propose them for the parallelism.))
> * A rule like <ident> now captures, while «ws» or <<ws>> doesn't.
>I think I really like that last outcome. Capturing should be the default.
>And the low profile of «ws» makes it look like an "oh by the way".
I don't think I like that as much as you do. I'm not sure I *dislike*
it either... but I would be tempted to say that the double guillemets
should do twice as much (identify AND capture). That might be simply
because I'm not used to it, though. Either way, I know I really like
being able to drop the parentheses when capturing like that.
Overall, I think the new proposal is an improvement.
-David «foo» Green
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