Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!convex!tchrist
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Newlines in prints
Message-ID: <1991Feb20.172023.13416@convex.com>
Date: 20 Feb 91 17:20:23 GMT
References: <1991Feb20.155958.8027@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: tchrist@convex.com (Tom Christiansen)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 36

From the keyboard of worley@compass.com:
:   From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
:
:   Well, you can save two characters by defining $n = "\n", but it sounds
:   more like you want to set $\ to "\n" and then have a subroutine for
:   printing without the newline:
:
:This leaves various problems, mostly that setting $\ makes adding the
:newlines mandatory.  Also, a subroutine for printing won't have the
:same syntax as "print".  What I want is a quick-n-easy punctuation
:mark that can be inserted at the end (and preferably anywhere) 

I don't see what a special token, like NL (or your own $N), would gain you
over "\n".  It doesn't seem worth it.  Modulo file-handles not getting
commas, &print and &println functions would look just like print's but
with parens, wouldn't they?

    sub print   { print @_; }
    sub println { print @_, "\n"; }

Tacking on a newline doesn't seem to my mind enough hassle to justify 
further obfuscating the language with another print function or a magic 
token or variable.  

    print "this is a foo: ", $foo;
    print "this is a newline foo", $foo, ;  # <- trailing comma trigger NL

This sounds too much like BASIC, which perl really isn't.  That comma is 
hard to see, and anything bigger undoes any convenience.

Now, swrite may be a whole nother matter.

--tom
-- 
Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist
 "All things are possible, but not all expedient."  (in life, UNIX, and perl)