Re: String Literals, take 1

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>: Jonathan Scott Duff <[email protected]>
>>: Joseph Ryan <[email protected]>

> > 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)

Good point, I missed them; interestingly, I can't find a reference to
them in perl5's perlop.

>
>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.

I disagree, that should go in perlop. (Same with the concat operator, 
whatever that will be when that section is written)

>
> > - 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?

A hash is a set of pairs, so pair interpolation needs to be defined before 
hash interpolation can.  I like the way the RFC suggests that
hashes interpolate, given that $/ and $" are upgraded to perl6 terms.

>
> > =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..

Yes, thats true, but Here-Docs are so... different.  Different enough to
get their own section.  You are right that the sentance is unclear, however.

>
>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.
>

Sounds good to me, except that the backslash is special in single-quoted
strings too.  The only real non-interpolated construct is the single-
quoted Here-Doc.

> > =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.

Woops. :)


Joseph F. Ryan.

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