RE: "Secret" operators

Hi All,

High in fun, but low in usefulness is -+- , a high precedence string
numerifier. It sort of looks like an A C Clarke style spacestation so
that's what I've been calling it. Although I'm not too sure that Larry's
spaceship <=> would be able to dock to easily.

Examples:
	print -+-'23a'    # prints 23
	print -+-'3.00'   # prints 3	
	print -+-'1.2e3'  # prints 1200
	
I know 0+ does the trick too, but binary + has a relatively low
precedence. Perl will automatically numerify the arguments of the *
operator but won't do so for x, !~ or =~. Hence this operator is useful
for removing unsightly parenthesises from some expressions.

	print 0+'20GBP'   x 3;  # Wrong. Prints 20   ==
0+"20GBP20GBP20GBP"
	print (0+'20GBP') x 3;  # Wrong. x 3 is applied to the return of
print
	print((0+'20GBP') x 3); # Right, but too Lispy 
	print -+-'20GBP'  x 3;  # Right. Spacestation to the rescue!

Unfortunately -+- is bugged [*], but I'll leave these as gotcha's for
your production code. :-)



Cheers,

Alistair

[*] You might want to consider: print    -+- '-2B'      x 5;  # Bug?


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