Re: copying and s/// (was Re: Overlapping RFCs 135 138 164)

>RFC 164 v2 has a new syntax that lets you do the above or, if you want:

>   $this = s/foo/bar/, $that;
>   @these = s/foo/bar/, @those;

>Consistent with split, join, splice, etc, etc.

That looks tremendously *IN*consistent, since now you must alter
the laws of precedence! :-(

    % perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e '$this = s/foo/bar/, $that;'
    (($this = s/foo/bar/), $that);

>> but we need a better syntax for s/// that doesn't modify its string but
>> returns a copy which has had the substitution applied to it.

>See RFC 164 v2, all this is supported, as well as this:

>   @str =~ s/foo/bar/;

>Which has been a pipe dream for some time.

I can't imagine that the number of elements in @str constains
the string "foo".  Or has one decided that @array in scalar
context no longer returns that?  

Anyway, this is nothing we don't have, or which is broken.
We already have the highly readable:

    for (@str) { s/foo/bar/ } 

Why do you want to magically use scalar operators on arrays?  This
was suggested back as early as perl1 or so because people wanted
to write @a + @b and even @a + 2, and Larry wasn't interested in
doing that.  That's a big new world.

--tom