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Re^5: why does push not default to $_?
by pobocks (Chaplain) on Dec 06, 2008 at 23:36 UTC
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Even fairly regular natural languages (Latin, for instance) tend to have large numbers of irregularities, tending to cluster around the most commonly used words/concepts.
English is, of course, a particularly non-standardized language, but it is, as the poster suggests, modeled after English. Specifically, the "default to '$_'/'@_'" functionality is modeled after default pronouns in English, and is certainly a key concern of this thread.
The "then perl isn't your forte" was kind of a cheap shot, though.
I'm not sure how non-orthogonal it is for a built-in to choose not to default to $_, especially given that most of the built-ins that do default are unary, to my knowledge.
for(split(" ","tsuJ rehtonA lreP rekcaH")){print reverse . " "}print "\b.\n";
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"Print, photocopy, and fax it" where the first two verbs are referring to "it". Not really sure if this works as a good example, though.
I'm so adjective, I verb nouns! chomp; # nom nom nom
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It's not trivial, don't worry...
There's no specific "Default pronoun" in English, per se -- it's more that, in certain circumstances, one of several English pronouns can be defaulted to (assumed). The most common of these is probably the implied "you" that imperative statements have, but there are other circumstances (None of which I can compose off the top of my head, because I'm sleep deprived. I'll try to think up some later.)
for(split(" ","tsuJ rehtonA lreP rekcaH")){print reverse . " "}print "\b.\n";
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Re^5: why does push not default to $_?
by JavaFan (Canon) on Dec 06, 2008 at 17:27 UTC
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Maybe you think this because your an English speaker, but I know plenty of languages which are far more consistent and orthogonal than English.
Well, I'm not a native English speaker, but Larry Wall certainly is. And if any particular natural language was used to model Perl after, it was English, and not a more consistent and orthogonal language.
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