RE: Autovivification

 
--

On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 13:02:12  
 Brent Dax wrote:
>Erik Steven Harrison:
># >I think that, if Perl can determine the type with virtually no 
># >ambiguity, it should autovivify.
># 
># Actually, this behavior has already (mostly) been decided over in P6 
># language. It was decided (and I agree) that the Perl 5 behavior of 
>
>Can you give me a link or a thread name or something?

No, because I am crazy and hallucinated it. I turned a
 thread on autovification of read only values and then 
filled in my own, biased opinion. Consider my right to 
post removed.


>
># autovivifying references to the basic data types is the incorrect 
># behavior, leading to a lot of bugs when dealing wityh complex data 
># structures. So no autovifiying an untyped $undefined_var[$foo]
>
>Why?  It's pretty obvious that you want an array, and the normal array
>Perl 6 provides is a good default.
>
>If this is the case, why should we allow C<my @foo> or C<[qw(anon
>array)]> without a type?  After all, they might *really* want a
>different type of array!

I always liked that Perl would autovivify references 
if I assumed that the data was there. And then I 
actually started to write some complex (for me at the 
time) tree walking code, only to mangle the structure. 
A few slips in a for loop, and boom, the whole thing 
fritzed.

But then, I'm a self taught hobbyist. So I may not be 
the population we need to play to.


>
>My understanding was that Perl 6 is not abandoning the DWIM principle.
>When did this change?
>
>(Sorry if this sounds like I'm attacking you.  I'm not--I'm just
>attacking your opinion. :^) )

Oh good. My opinion has been getting uppity lately. This should put it in line. :-)

-Erik
>--Brent Dax <[email protected]>
>@roles=map {"Parrot $_"} qw(embedding regexen Configure)
>
>Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in
>New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates
>exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat.
>    --Albert Einstein (explaining radio)
>
>


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