Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Do you know where your variables are?
 
PerlMonks  

Re: poll ideas quest 2021

by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop)
on Aug 17, 2021 at 13:00 UTC ( [id://11135901]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to poll ideas quest 2021

If you had a time machine, which Perl language mis-feature would you expunge from existence?

There are surely others I've not thought of. Suggestions welcome.

This poll was provoked by two spookily similar replies I happened to make today: Re^2: Organizational Culture (Part VI): Sociology and Re^3: Create sort function from a text file (string eval vs block eval).

Update (much later):

  • The impossibility of performing a sound static parse of Perl (BTW this has been fixed in Raku)

See also:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: poll ideas quest 2021
by haukex (Archbishop) on Aug 17, 2021 at 14:31 UTC
    • Smartmatch (as much as I want a switch, this feature unfortunately caused too much confusion)
    • The inability to perform a static parse of Perl (which affects prototypes, indirect object notation, any other heuristics like map{..., etc.).

    Several things on the list I wouldn't call misfeatures at all (e.g. I love postfix if).

      Yes, strongly agree with your point about the impossibility of performing a static parse of Perl. Very annoying. Thankfully, this has been fixed in Raku.

      Years ago, I remember being in awe of adamk's tenacity in developing PPI after attending a few early talks at Sydney.pm -- sadly, that heroic effort may have burnt him out, at least he appears to have vanished from the Perl universe. And I almost fell off my chair when I first read about TheDamian's astonishing PPR regex wizardry. :)

      See also: Re: Perl script compressor by haukex - which mentions Guacamole.

        Guacamole

        I think it's noteworthy that the goal of that module is not to be able to parse all of Perl, just the subset of "standard Perl". So for example, it doesn't allow -bareword, stringy eval, unquoted hash keys on the left of the fat comma, and several more, but not because of technical limitations of the parser, but for policy reasons. I've suggested that the technical and policy based restrictions be disentangled to allow for easier porting of codebases to a parseable Perl, but I'm currently not sure when or if that might happen.

        Of course also noteworthy is RPerl, which I believe implements its own parser.

Re^2: poll ideas quest 2021
by haj (Vicar) on Aug 17, 2021 at 13:24 UTC

    Too late ! ;)

    In June this year, Neil Bowers initiated a collection of Perl quirks, or: "Perl: the WTF bits" on the P5P mailing list. The document is locked down while the Perl Steering Council are wading through the first round, but perhaps some entries in the list above have a chance to be deprecated, and eventually (read: before the end of this century) be eradicated from Perl. Or you might want to add them, once the collection reopens.

      Thanks. I'll keep my eye on Neil's Perl Quirks locked down document and update this node when it's finally made public. Meanwhile, please feel free to add your suggestions to my initial list.

      Note to pollsters: please hold off creating a poll on this topic until Neil's document is made public.

      Update Oct 2022: The Perl Quirks document appears to be stalled. p5p mailing list refs:

      Looks like it won't make poll ideas quest 2022. Perhaps resurrect in 2023.

      Update Nov 2023: Given this document still appears to be stalled, it seems safe to assume that it will never be made public.

Re^2: poll ideas quest 2021
by Discipulus (Canon) on Aug 17, 2021 at 20:35 UTC
    Perl has misfeatures? Really? Ok it has some fun bit..

    By other hand I hope for it a Miss Future ;)

    L*

    There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
    Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://11135901]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others chilling in the Monastery: (6)
As of 2024-03-28 21:41 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found