Re: Cross-referencing RFC 186 with RFC 183 and RFC 79

Nathan Wiger wrote:

> I think this is a definite possibility:
> 
>    $FH = open scalar $myvar;
>    print $FH "stuff";
> 
> Then the scalar handler would just have to provide the necessary print()
> et al methods to do scalar manipulation. Theoretically this can be done
> modularly, without having to wedge it into the core binary, while still
> being able to get speed benefits.

I fully agree with that last sentence, with the caveat that
[as RFC-186 describes] certain things should be in the 
*standard module set* if they are both extremely useful
and extremely dependent on a native implementation for speed.  
I argue that IO::Scalar and friends fall into this category.

This gives us:

	$FH = open IO::Scalar $myvar;
	print $FH "stuff";

I'm weary of proposals like "lets add/extend named operator X".
Perl needs *fewer* special cases, not *more*.  I want the
following pairs to ALWAYS be identical, and ALWAYS mean
method invocation:

	open THING ARG,...,ARG	
	THING->open(ARG,...,ARG)
	
	print THING ARG,...,ARG
	THING->print(ARG,...,ARG)

And I want the *absence* of an indirect object to have
the well-defined meaning that we are *calling a function*:

	print ARGS...		# function call of CORE::print()
	print $OUT ARGS...	# method invocation
	$OUT->print(ARGS...)	# method invocation

Implementation of CORE::print() then reduces to:

	sub CORE::print { $CORE::DEFOUT->print(@_); }

Eryq