Re: exists $foo[7] and delete $foo[7]

[Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@ActiveState.com>]

Welcome back.

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000 21:38:52 +0200, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
>
>I vote for NOT extending delete() and exists() to work on array
>elements.  I fail to see the usefulness of the feature.  Exposing the
>internal implementation is irrelevant and I dare say too confusing.
>That "delete $a[12]" should leave the element in a different state
>than "undef $a[12]" sounds like too much fun to try to explain.  Well,
>yes, the element is in different internal state.  But *what for*,
>externally?  What would this feature give to the programmer?  (And as
>Tom pointed out, the terms "uninitialized" and "undefined" have been
>used interchangeably in the past.)
>
>I also will step forth and say that I find the current Perl-level
>interface to pseudohashes most vile and think it should not get out
>alive to 5.6.  The concept as such is okay, but that $a[0] is elevated
>to a special role, stinks really bad.  I'd rather see, say,
>a pragma interface.

I don't want us to blow a lot of time arguing about this stuff (for or
against).  There are many more important things to do for 5.6.

Currently my choices are these:

  1. remove exists/delete support for arrays, keep them for pseudo-hashes
     (pseudo-hashes will still remain experimental)
  2. remove exists/delete support for arrays, and remove/deprecate
     pseudo-hashes altogether
  3. don't change anything over what was in 5.005_63
  4. something else I haven't thought of

If you haven't already done so, please tell me what you'd like to
see happen.


Sarathy
gsar@ActiveState.com

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Follow-Ups from:

Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
sthoenna@efn.org (Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes)
Martyn Pearce <m.pearce@inpharmatica.co.uk>

References to:

Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>

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