An Optometrist and a Language Designer Walk Into a Bar....

In one post you referece, "ank" wrote:

Operators are akin to prepositions and should be kept to a minimum, in my very humble opinion.

I can see why you chose someone with such a strong opinion to use as a foil to this post, but honestly, isn't picking on someone who views operators as prepositions kind of like shooting fish in a barrel?

This aside, I wonder how Java handles this?

    if ( string1.equals(string2) )                   { ... }
    if ( string1.equalsIgnoreCase(string2) )         { ... }
    if ( string1.compareTo(string2) == 0 )           { ... }
    if ( string1.compareToIgnoreCase(string2) == 0 ) { ... }
    if ( string1.contentEquals(stringBuffer) )       { ... }
    if ( string1 == string2 )                        { ... }

And those are just for strings! Every single one of those has a different meaning and is needed (though you could easily shrink this list if Java wasn't so broken).

As you already know, and as I'm sure many readers of this blog are already aware, operators are effectively a shorthand for certain common methods (except that Java doesn't let you overload operators outside of '+' for the String class). Regardless of what one thinks about Java, they had a reason for providing all of those different comparison operators, er, methods. And even then, let's look at how some of them compare to Perl 6:

Equality:

    if ( string1.compareTo(string2) == 0 ) { ... }
    if $string1 eq $string2                { ... }

Less than:

    if ( string1.compareTo(string2) < 0 ) { ... }
    if $string1 lt $string2               { ... }

Greater than:

    if ( string1.compareTo(string2) > 0 ) { ... }
    if $string1 gt $string2               { ... }

Needless to say, I find the Perl 6 far easier to read than the Java, but Java's constrained because of its poor operator handling.

At the end of the day, most people will not need the extra Perl 6 operators, but when they do need them, they'll be thankful they're there.

As noted in a Perl-IL and Python-IL post I've made, Python can sometimes throw an exception if you do a "==" comparison:

shlomi:~$ python
Python 2.6.2 (r262:71600, Jul 11 2009, 07:37:11) 
[GCC 4.4.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> x = [0,1,2]
>>> x[0] = x
>>> y = [0,1,2]
>>> y[0] = y
>>> x
[[...], 1, 2]
>>> y
[[...], 1, 2]
>>> x == y
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded in cmp
>>> 

Python also has an "is" operator, but it only checks if the values are the same referent.

The plus operator is obviously a verb, yes. So is print. Read it aloud in execution order in English: evaluate the array named "array" in scalar context, add zero, and print the result.

Ah yes. And now we get to the heart of the matter. Traditionally, operators have meant just that - operate (apply this particular operation) to these items. That's not quite fitting today - and it's especially not fitting for perl.

Take, for example - print @array+0. Most programmers will read that as "print the size of this array". The verb? print. The subject? an array. Since when has "the size of" been a verb? Moreso with perl - operators like => more and more "introduce" bits of that to be processed by the overall line.

Now, please tell me how => is a verb. Thanks.

Now that you've found a modicum of humility, please make a post in use.perl stating that:

1. you misread my original comment (i never said oeprators ARE prepositions, I said they are AKIN TO prepositions;)
2. you were wrong in that "operators are verbs", and
3. given this new information, you will review the operators that exist in perl 6, in light of its sheer complexity.