For a *real* thread-burner, ask me about those features of perl that I *adore* that everyone else hates. :)

For me, $; is probably near the head of the list. Or maybe symbolic references.

--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia

• Perl's laissez faire approach to OO. Most people bitch and moan about it for one reason or another, but I like being able to be as OO as I want to be... or not. It's just so damned easy to do exactly what I want, I figure those that complain are either grinding axes or bondage freaks.
• Punctuation. I love punctuation. It doesn't look like programming without the line noise. Do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs?
• Built-in networking and IPC functions. This is what turned me on to Perl in the first place (and scarred me for life from TCL). We don' need no steeeenkin modules.
• eval string
• Globs. They're fun to say. GLOB GLOB GLOB GLOB GLOB. And they're fun to use.
• package variables. It seems everyone's got a hard on for lexicals. my() this, my() that. Sounds like a bunch of three year olds. Gimme a namespace and chuck use strict and I'm happy. /me hugs local() too
• Punctuation variable names. Wait. That goes with my punct fetish.
More later...

5. *sigh* yeah the sigil thing is hard on beginners, now however I am not happy about having to switch back... In some ways it does make sense as well, $ is scalar and you're getting a single element (scalar) out. Slices use @ denoting multiple elements returned.

6. Why? Implementation, or too much for one operator?

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perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"

Says belg4mit:

6. [ <> globbing was a bad idea ] Why? Implementation, or too much for one operator?

Too much semantics on one piece of notation. If Larry hadn't unnecessarily overloaded <> to do globbing, then you would be able to write

    @array_of_fhs = ...;

    my $line = <$array_of_fhs[37]>;
[download]

Which you can't presently do, and which frequently trips people up. Without the glob overloading, this would have meant just what it appears to.

--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia

>Too much semantics on one piece of notation.
 If Larry hadn't unnecessarily overloaded <>
>to do globbing, then you would be able to write
[download]

That's what I said, or rather asked if that was why clintp disliked it.

As for the catch, yes. I have had to resort to readline before because of that.

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"