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~ for concat / negation (Re: The Perl 6 Emulator)

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From:
Nathan Wiger
Date:
June 21, 2001 20:32
Subject:
~ for concat / negation (Re: The Perl 6 Emulator)
Message ID:
20010621134128.E21205@west.sun.com
* Simon Cozens <simon@netthink.co.uk> [06/14/2001 15:16]:
>
> OK, I've been teasing people about this for weeks, and it's time to stop.
> This is the current state of the Perl 6 emulator; it applies most things
> that Damian talked about in his keynote yesterday, and most of the things
> I've picked up in perl6-language. It does:
> 
>     $a ~ $b                 for concat
>     ^ $a                    for negation

I just want to briefly register a formal complaint that I do not like
this, and I suspect I'm not the only one. I just think many have stopped
trying to fight it out of exhaustion.

I don't like ~ for binary concat. For one thing, it means that the
equivalent of .= is now:

   $a ~= $b

Does anyone else see a problem with =~ ? Plus, it makes the
pre-plus-concat that many desire impossible, since =~ is taken.

Second, even if ~ *is* used for concat, then I *still* don't think that
~ should be changed from unary negation. There's no reason for it. Every
other major modern language I can think of uses ~ for unary negation. An
operator can change its meaning based on context, just consider <<.

In summary:

   1. I don't like ~ for concat 

   2. But if it does become concat, then we still shouldn't
      change ~'s current unary meaning


Thanks for listening.

-Nate


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