Comments for dagolden

Comment on Thoughts on Perl 6 hype and backlash by Stanley Hopcroft

Stanley Hopcroft — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:42:40 +0000

Perhaps a reasonable basis for the comparison of '5 and 6, is that of another pair of numbers 4 and 6, the Internet Protocol version 4 and version 6.

IPv6 has had an even longer gestation period than Perl 6, the fundamental RFCs have been redone a few times (eg site local addresses) and even now, getting on to 15 years after the announcement, major production releases of Cisco IOS (12.4) do not include fundamental features (eg v6 ACLs).

And at the same time, there is no real interest in more than half the world in bearing the pain of renumbering to 128 bit addresses.

Perhaps the moral is anything that is big enough to attract at least the superficial attention of almost every man and his dog is not easy to do. Whether it was done well is something only history will determine.

(one also thinks of the gut theory of everything, perhaps even more chimerical).

Comment on Creating new distributions with Dist::Zilla by Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:44:26 +0000

The one problem I found with dzil's minting capabilities is that if you change your preferred dist.ini settings in the profile skeleton dir, these changes will not be reflected in already-created modules. To fix this, you can create a module that implements your config using Dist::Zilla::Role::PluginBundle::Easy, and then you can replace all the plugins in dist.ini with your one custom plugin bundle. This bundle will be used by all your new modules, and you can update the bundle whenever you like, and your updates will apply to all your old modules as well.

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by dagolden

dagolden — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:48:29 +0000

In your first two examples, I would expect it to work just the exact same way that @{ $obj->foo } would work if foo() returned multiple values or an empty list. In your third example, if the first element of @bar is an array ref, it's pushed onto the array, just like normal. I'm only suggesting letting the target of the push be an array reference, because that's the only place where the intention is clear by context.

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by dagolden

dagolden — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:38:51 +0000

It's not core. (At least, not yet.) And it works through method resolution, and I don't think the overhead should be necessary for simple array manipulation. autobox is a great tool because Perl isn't smart enough about references.

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by Aristotle Pagaltzis

Aristotle Pagaltzis — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:27:30 +0000

What happens if $obj->foo returns multiple values? What will push foo(), @bar, @baz do if foo returns the empty list? And depending on the answer to that one: what will it do if the first element in @bar is an array ref? Then, whatever behaviour you pick: how do you explain it to a less experienced programmer who has to maintain some Perl code? (This feels a little like the Perl 6 RFC process all over…) A while back I saw a proposal to have $foo->@ mean @{ $foo }, so that your examples would become eg. push $obj->foo->@, @stuff. To me that seems more likely to work without wonderfully strange new corner cases. Though still slightly cumbersome, it still simplifies the syntax (just a postfix, instead of a circumfix around arbitrarily large expressions). And it also has the advantage of being available in places other than a handful of magic built-ins.

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by marc chantreux

marc chantreux — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:19:00 +0000

@mirod: really: i use it daily !

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by marc chantreux

marc chantreux — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:16:05 +0000

hello,

Even i'm boring about writing/reading the @{ } stuff, i have to say i really appreciate the presence of the sigil because it make the code more readable (@ so you know it's an array) and reliable (@ so perl can crash if not an array).

what i would like to see is @$obj->foo

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by mirod

mirod — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:05:53 +0000

Amen, the @{ } syntax has always struck me as the ugliest part of Perl by far. Especially for references in a hash push @{ $foo->{bar}}, 1 is really, really ugly. I understand that in the case of for ($foo->{bar}) { ... } there would be an ambiguity, but really, how often do you do this to get the reference in $foo->{bar} in $_?

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by Adam Kennedy

Adam Kennedy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:23:13 +0000

Theory: Because of the performance penalty.

I quite like the alternative syntax, but only if the run-time speed for shift @whatever is absolutely the same.

I really don't want to pay a speed penalty for some of the most heavily used functions in the entire language.

Comment on If Perl were smarter about references by Theory

Theory — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:15:30 +0000

Why not use autobox? For example: for ($obj->foo->values) { ... } —Theory