Re: String Literals, take 1

On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:40:28AM +0000, Joseph Ryan wrote:
> Anyways, here's a first draft of the string documentation ...

I didn't see any mention of vstrings  (e.g. tokens of the form
v5.8.0.  I also got the impression from a response Larry made to one
of the emails in the thread on numbers that the leading v might be
optional)

Also, I didn't see mention of the string context coercer which though
it doesn't really have to do with literals, probably should have a
reference here somewhere.

> - Larry was never specific as to how hashes interpolate; anyone have
>   any ideas?

I'd think that hashes would interpolate as a list of
key,value,key,value,etc.

BTW, how do pairs interpolate?

> =pod
> 
> =head1 Strings
> 
> A string is a literal value that represents a sequence of characters.
> A string object is formed when a sequence of characters is enclosed in
> one of the quoting operators, of which there are 3 types:
> Interpolating, Non-Interpolating, and Here-Docs; 

This classification doesn't make sense to me. Here-docs are just another
quoting operator which can be interpolating or non-interpolating..

Also, the whole idea of "interpolation" probably needs to be
explained up front.  Maybe something like this:

        There are two types of quoting operators: interpolating and
        non-interpolating. In interpolating constructs, the value of a
        variable is substituted for the variable name within the string
        and certain characters have special meaning when preceded by a
        backslash (C<\>). In non-interpolating constructs, a variable
        name that appears within the string is used as-is. The simplest
        examples of these two types of quoting operators are strings
        delimited by double (interpolating) and single quotes
        (non-interpolating). For example:

		'The quick brown $animal'
		"The quick brown $animal"

        In the first string, perl will take each character literally and
        perform no special processing. In the second string, the value
        of the variable $animal is inserted within the string at that
        location. If $animal had had the value "fox", then the second
        string would have become "The quick brown fox".

	More on the various quoting operators below.

> =head2 Non-Interpolating Constructs

oh, a minor nit here ... tackle the items in the order that you first
list them.  In your 3 type classification you mention interpolating
first then non-interpolating, so you should start off talking about
interpolating or switch the order in the list.

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
[email protected]