Re: [RFC] Generalize support of negative string offsets

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 11:14 PM, Stanislav Malyshev <smalyshev@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi! > > > The only concern I have is that support of negative indexing will break > > symmetry with (proper) arrays, where we cannot support negative indexing. > > I think that was the main source of objections to this proposal in the > past. However, as one might say, string offsets are already not > symmetrical to array offsets - e.g. you can do $array["foo"] but not > $string["foo"]. > > > However this is unlikely to be a significant issue. (I do however play > with > > the thought of reutilizing the obsolete {} indexing syntax to act as > offset > > indexing instead.) > > I think it may be a good idea to start recommending using {} for string > offsets and [] for arrays. While both syntaxes may work for strings, the > intent (and expected handling of negatives, in this case) is much > clearer when different syntax is used. I strongly disagree with this. $str[$offset] is well-recognized, generally understood syntax that does not require familiarity with language peculiarities. $str{$offset} might be clear to a Perl programmer, but to anyone else this is just guesswork, with a typo being a reasonable assumption. We should be deprecating this alternative syntax instead of recommending its use. I was under the impression that we *were* already discouraging its use and it has already been temporarily deprecated. Nikita