RFC 45 (v3) C<||> and C<&&> should propagate result context to both sides

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=head1 TITLE

C<||> and C<&&> should propagate result context to both sides

=head1 VERSION

       Maintainer: Peter Scott <[email protected]>
       Date: 5 Aug 2000
       Last-Modified: 29 Aug 2000
       Mailing List: [email protected]
       Version: 3
       Number: 45
       Status: Frozen

=head1 ABSTRACT

Currently the expressions

       lvalue = expr_A || expr_B
       lvalue = expr_A && expr_B

evaluate C<expr_A> in scalar context, regardless of the type of C<lvalue>,
only propagating list or scalar context to C<expr_B>.  This proposal is
that the context of C<lvalue> should be propagated to C<expr_A> as well.

=head1 DESCRIPTION

It would be nice to be able to say

       @a = @b || @c

instead of having to resort to

       @a = @b ? @b : @c

The reason that it is not currently possible is that C<@b> (or the list
expression in its place) has to be evaluated in scalar context to determine
whether to evaluate C<@c>, and that propagating context to C<@b> would
require reevaluating it, which might have undesirable side effects (instead
of C<@b>, it might be C<decrement_balance()>).

Tom Christiansen pointed out that for consistency, both C<||> and C<&&> need to
be changed, since in the latter case, if C<@b> is empty, then C<@a> will
currently get the single element 0.  We want it to get an empty list.

=head1 IMPLEMENTATION

It seems that it ought to be possible to evaluate something in a list
context and test whether there are any entries in the resulting list
without having to reevaluate the expression in a scalar context.  The
work-around with the trinary operator also evaluates C<@b> twice (which
H.Merijn Brand pointed out could even be tied and hence evaluation not
idempotent).

It's true that we are evaluating something in list context and then applying
a boolean interpretation to the result (empty list is false, otherwise true);
in this case we are trading a lesser consistency (likely only to be
appreciated by someone who's been thinking for a long time about contexts)
for a greater one.

=head1 IMPACTS

L<RFC 82> would require a different interpretation, namely that the result
would be the list formed by applying C<&&> or C<||> to each successive pair
of elements in C<@b> and C<@c>.  This author likes the idea of certain
component-wise operators, and appreciates the importance of consistency,
but just can't see a component-wise interpretation of the logical operators
being either useful or intuitive.

=head1 REFERENCES

L<perlop/"C-style Logical Or">

RFC 21: "Replace C<wantarray> with a generic C<want> function"

RFC 82: "Apply operators component-wise in a list context"