Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Are only simple scalars allowed in "do SUBROUTINE (LIST)" ?
Message-ID: <7294@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 6 Mar 90 20:14:19 GMT
References: <1211@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au> <7269@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <21611@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1990Mar6.180823.27618@iwarp.intel.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 36

In article <1990Mar6.180823.27618@iwarp.intel.com> merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes:
: In article <21611@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, ccplumb@lion (Colin Plumb) writes:
: | Well, when I wanted the time from a file, the first thing I tried was
: | 
: | $time = stat($file)[8];
: | 
: | It didn't work so well.
: 
: I've stumbled across wanting such a syntax as well.  I think it's the
: C programmer in me that would think it natural.  I've held off asking
: for it because I'm afraid it would break something.  Maybe in Perl 4? :-)

It wouldn't be too hard except that

	EXPR [ EXPR ]

successfully parses $var[$foo], and it would be wrong.  It could probably
be worked out with some more shift-reduce ambiguities, but I'm loath.

Would you settle for this?

	( LIST ) [ EXPR ]

Since LISTs can contain anything that returns array values, you could say

	$time = (stat($file))[8];

That could be parsed unambiguously, methinks.

It would in fact be a slice operator, so you could say

	@days = ('Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat')[$beg .. $end];

What think?

Larry