Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!news
From: flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: any chance of real multi-dimensional arrays?
Message-ID: <Ef!4cg@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 21 Feb 90 15:18:02 GMT
References: <1990Feb20.225434.2045@athena.mit.edu> <100127@convex.convex.com>
Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Penn State University Computer Science
Lines: 17

Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM> wrote:
>The problem I see with doing multi-dimensional arrays the way you've
>said them is growing both indices dynamically.

You promote lists to first-class objects and let lists contain lists:
	@a = (1, (2, 3), (4, 5));
And similarly with associations:
	%a{'rgb'} = ('red', 1, 'green', 2, 'blue', 3);
Except Perl's syntax makes this a little strange.  Compare
	$b{'rgb'} = ('red', 1, 'green', 2, 'blue', 3);
It's ($a{'rgb'}{'red'} == 1), but ($b{'rgb'}[1] == 1).  At least,
that's what I think.  Perl's use of % $ and @ is pretty bizarre.
And associations really shouldn't get confused with lists.

Non-trivial change to Perl.  Version 4?
--
Felix Lee	flee@shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!flee