Re: RFC for $ME class variable (was Re: RFC 124 (v1) Sort order for any hash)

>>>>> "John" == John Siracusa <[email protected]> writes:

John> I don't like $ME either, but my alternative is probably even more
John> blasphemous: use $self.  "It usurps a variable name that has been legal for
John> customer use in prior Perls!" you re-exclaim.  Not if it only appears in a
John> new-to-Perl-6 construct like:

John> method get_polite_age(<neat stuff could go here>)
John> {
John>   return ($self->age >= 40) ? 39 : $self->age;
John> }

Well, that I could support.  Although having the p52p6 translator
recognize which subs should really be methods might be a bit messy,
and then it'd have to recognize any uses of $self for a proper $self,
and not shift something into that, or whatever. :)
<voice character="Dr. Smith">The pain!  The pain!</voice>

John> But wait, it gets worse:  I'd even be happy with the bareword "self"

John> method get_polite_age(<neat stuff could go here>)
John> {
John>   return (self->age >= 40) ? 39 : self->age;
John> }

John> I know, I'm obviously crazy as a loon.  You may escort me to Perl culture
John> prison now... ;)

I'll have an adjacent cell.  I actually like that *better* than $self.
Let's not stop there though.  Perhaps we need "self" and "super" and
"thisContext".  Only half joking... this would solve a lot of the
hacking issues.  self could be a "die" if we weren't called as a
method, and then we wouldn't need to have a separate "method" type.
Oooh.  Getting better all the time!  Or maybe just return undef, and
let the method call fail on the undef, or we could check it ahead:

        if (my $me = self) {
          $me->do_this
        } else {
          $CGI::Q->do_this
        }

To steal from CGI.pm's problem.  Or, if it threw an exception:

        try {
          self->do_this
        } error {
          $CGI::Q->do_this
        }

or whatever the syntax is this week.

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