Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!ccount
From: ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: any chance of real multi-dimensional arrays?
Message-ID: <1990Feb21.233551.26616@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 21 Feb 90 23:35:51 GMT
References: <1990Feb20.225434.2045@athena.mit.edu> <7125@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
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Reply-To: ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman)
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In article <7125@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:

>It's can-of-worms time...

Ok, so the answer is 'NO'.  I can live with that.

Actually, I know the dimensions of the array before I start using it,
so I can use a 1d array and calculate the subscript, e.g.
vvals[$i*$nvars+$j].  But I wish for some syntactic sugar.

>
>You could certainly say something like
>
>#!/usr/bin/perl -P
>#define mapcar grep

Well, grep isn't identical to mapcar, but I think it can be used for
that functionality.

>
>: And I'd like more stream input functions, like scanf or a 'get_word'
>: function.  I've written the latter easily enough as a subroutine, but
>: still...
>
>I detest and abhor scanf.  I always have.

I don't disagree, but I do need it from time to time.

>
>However, you should know that I'm strongly considering letting you do
>pattern matching against the input symbol:
>
>	<STDIN> =~ /^pattern/;
>
>If you do this currently it will just read one line and pattern match on
>it.  I'm considering making it read any extra lines it needs to satisfy the
>pattern match.  Except that this could break existing scripts...
>

YES, that's exactly what I wish for.  Skip the file till a keyword is
found, then do something to the contents till another is found, etc.

>Larry

I really look forward to a BOOK I can sit down with and pick up all
the idioms.

But I'll get the hang of it soon.  perl does seem to fill a niche for
me.  Thanks for the language/program.

Craig