[Sorry, sent this to the wrong list by mistake.]

Matthew Zimmerman wrote:
>  Juerd wrote:
>  
> > Kurt skribis 2005-06-20 19:46 (-0400):
> >
> >> On 6/20/05, Juerd wrote:
> >>
> >>> Or you can just get your "self" with a simple (module that does)
> >>>    macro self () { '$?SELF' }
> >>
> >>
> >> And you could do the same for `./`.
> >
> >
> >
> > Certainly.
> >
> > However, there has proven to be much demand for something like ./method,
> > and in such cases, having it by default is probably the best thing.
> >
> > I personally don't think it's either necessary or too much. I care about
> > .method using $_, and many other people care about having short syntax
> > for self.method too. ./method was something that would work for me, so I
> > shared that idea, and it was generally accepted.
> >
> > Apart from the personal joy of seeing something I invented become part
> > of the official language, I don't really care if ./method is eventually
> > part of Perl 6 or not. I have always named my invocants, and don't mind
> > continue to do so. On the other hand, if there is a shorthand, I will
> > use it, because regardless of whether you think it's pretty or ugly, and
> > regardless of whether you think it looks enough like a method call,
> > having a short two character operator for this is in fact very
> > convenient.
>  
>  
>  Could we revisit the idea of using a shorter keyword for $?SELF, like 
>  'o'? I know that $Larry said the idea was "probably" not going to work:
>  
>    http://tinyurl.com/7baz6
>  
>  but I'm curious if the reasoning that killed it then still holds now, 
>  now that './' has emerged as a replacement.
>  
>  Count me among the './' dissenters, too. The virtual explosion of new 
>  operators in Perl 6 has not concerned me too much, as I don't envision 
>  myself using many of them, but the operation that './' does is something 
>  I do very frequently. I'm just imaging a lot of my Perl 5 code like:
>  
>     if ( $self->unit_id == $s2->unit_id ) {
>          $self->add_component(
>                           $self->_fraction * $self->concentration +
>                               $s2->_fraction * $s2->concentration
>                          );
>          $self->update;
>     }
>  
>  replaced with:
>  
>     if ( $.unit_id = $s2.unit_id ) {
>          ./add_component(
>                          ./:fraction * ./concentration +
>                          $s2.:fraction * $s2.concentration
>                         );
>          ./update;
>     }
>  
>  and it gives me the willies. If I have a complicated mathematical 
>  expression with method calls in it (which happens a lot for me), the '/' 
>  part of './' in particular gives me lots of visual problems.
>  
>  I'll put
>  
>     macro o () { '$?SELF' }
>  
>  at the top of my code if I have to, but I want to make one last gasp at 
>  getting $Larry / @Larry to reconsider this.
>  


-- 
       Matt

       Matthew Zimmerman
       Interdisciplinary Biophysics, University of Virginia
       http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mdz4c/