I take your point, however -- there are indeed exceptions. I think "english language" unary operators might be a whole class of exceptions since they parse (to us) as English rather than code.

By the way, why is '->' a binary operator? From perldoc:

"->" is an infix dereference operator, just as it is in C and C++. If the right side is either a ..., {...}, or a (...) subscript, then the left side must be either a hard or symbolic reference to an array, a hash, or a subroutine respectively. (Or technically speaking, a location capable of holding a hard reference, if it's an array or hash reference being used for assignment.) See perlreftut and perlref. Otherwise, the right side is a method name or a simple scalar variable containing either the method name or a subroutine reference, and the left side must be either an object (a blessed reference) or a class name (that is, a package name). See perlobj.

Seems like dereferencing is dereferencing is dereferencing, no RHS required. Is there an association going on as well?

Matt

You wrote:
Since I never use 'not' in my code ... yes. ;)

If not, why not? What do you use instead?
I find not is usually the cleanest and most readable operator for all sorts of tests.

die "$usage" if not @ARGV;

if (not -r $file) { die "Cannot read $file\n"; }

print "$pattern not found in $file\n" if not $found;
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And so forth.

--
Regards,
Helgi Briem
helgi AT decode DOT is

If not, why not? What do you use instead? I find not is usually the cleanest and most readable operator for all sorts of tests.

It's just a matter of taste. I'm not against using not, I just don't happen to prefer it.

You give the following example:

print "$pattern not found in $file\n" if not $found;
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In this case I would use unless:

print "$pattern not found in $file\n" unless $found;
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As for if (not -r $file) {...}, I typically use the bang operator (!) rather than not -- just a matter of preference, probably due to my C influences.

Matt