Re: RFC 231 (v1) Data: Multi-dimensional arrays/hashes and slices

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> Are you trying to convince me/us that is going to be used often?
>
Yes, I am. You made the unsupported statement that array operations are
rarely used. I'm suggesting otherwise (although to say that they're rarely
used in Perl 5 is a tautology, of course!).

> > Array notation is not 'rarely used' in languages that support it--in
fact,
> > operations are applied to arrays and lists at least as often as scalars
in
> > most code I see written for Mathematica, J, PDL, and so forth.
>
> a) You can *already* use vectors as scalars in Perl;

That's not what RFC 82 is proposing.

> b) What we are discussing is Perl, not Mathematica, J, PDL, and so
>    forth.  These languages have a very narrow niche.

That's because few such languages provide strong general purpose programming
features as well. They are either limited maths-oriented languages (like
Mathematica) or add-ons to general purpose languages that aren't fully
integrated (Python/NumPy; Perl/PDL; C++/Blitz++).

Many Perl users operate on lists of data. Requiring explicit loops every
time a programmer wants to operate on a list is asking the programmer to fit
in with how a computer thinks. That's not right.