On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 07:32:58AM +0300, Alexey Trofimenko wrote:
: ah, I forget, how could I do qx'echo $VAR' in Perl6? something like  
: qx:noparse 'echo $VAR' ?

Hmm, well, with the currently defined adverbs you'd have to say

    qx:s(0)'echo $VAR'

but that doesn't give you protection from other kinds of interpolation.
I think we need two more adverbs that add the special features of qx and qw,
so that you could write that:

    q:x/echo $VAR/

where ordinary qx/$cmd/ is short for

    qq:x/$cmd/

Likewise a qw/a b/ is short for

    q:w/a b/

: (Note: I like thoose adverbs.. I could imagine that in Perl6 if you want  
: to have something done in some_other_way, you just should insert  
: :some_other_way adverb, and that is! perl will DWIM happily :)

Well, that's perhaps a bit underspecified from the computer's point of view.

: I notice that in Perl6 thoose funny « and » could be much more common 
: than  other paired brackets. And some people likes how they look, but 
: nobody  likes fact that there's no (and won't!) be a consistent way to type 
: them  in different applications, wether it's hard or easy.
: 
: But to swap «» with [] or {} could be real shock for major part of 
: people..
: We also have another ascii pair, < and >  . maybe they could be better than  
: « and » ?:) i'm not that farseeing, but isn't problem of distinguishing < 
: as a bracket and < as an comparison operator no harder than distinguishing  
: << as bracket and as part of heredoc?..

It would get very confusing visually, even if the computer could sort it out:

    @a > = @b
    @a > =< @b

But there are some things that would be completely ambiguous:

    %hash<foo> <bar>
    %hash<foo> <baz()

: or maybe even we could see consistant to go after +<< +> > and alike, and  
: make old < and >  written as +< and +> (and then lt and gt suddenly could  
: become ~< and ~>  :)

I think people would rise up and slay us if we did that.  We're already
getting sufficiently risen up and slain over Perl 6.

: But I certain, Larry already weighted exact that solution years ago..

Well, yes, but sometimes the weights change over time, so it doesn't
hurt (much) to reevaluate occasionally.  But in this case, I think I
still prefer to attach the "exotic" characters to the exotic behaviors,
and leave the angles with their customary uses.

: P.S. If you have an urgent need to throw spoiled eggs at me, consider all  
: above as very late or very early fools day joke.. or you could try, but  
: i've never heard about ballistic transcontinental eggs.

If you're a White Russian I suppose the yolk is on me.

Larry