RE: [FWP] Fun with terminology

["Larry Rosler" <lr@hpl.hp.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ronald J Kimball [mailto:rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu]
> Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 11:32
> To: Larry Rosler
> Cc: Peter Scott; fwp@technofile.org
> Subject: Re: [FWP] Fun with terminology
>
> On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 11:23:36AM -0700, Larry Rosler wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 11:11:12AM -0700, Peter Scott wrote:
> > > > Incidentally, can someone explain to me why perlop uses the term
'prefix'
> > > > here:
> > > >
> > > >       Here is what C has that Perl doesn't:
> > > >
> > > >       unary * Dereference-address operator. (Perl's prefix
> > > >               dereferencing operators are typed: $, @, %, and
&.)
> > > >
> > > > instead of 'unary'?  It seems to me that the Perl dereferencing
operators
> > > > are just as unary as C's *, so I'm wondering why the mix of
terminology in
> > > > the same paragraph.
> > >
> > > Probably because Perl also has the infix dereferencing operator ->
which is
> > > not typed.
> >
> > The last time I looked, C has one of those also.  :-)  Try again?
>
> I'm not sure what bearing that has on the original question.
>
> The question is:
>
> Why does the sentence say "Perl's prefix dereferencing operators are
> typed"?
>
> And my answer is:
>
> The phrase "Perl's dereferencing operators are typed" would not be
> correct.

Read it again!  The question is:

Why does the sentence say "Perl's prefix dereferencing operators are
typed" instead of saying "Perl's unary dereferencing operators are
typed"?

Your observation about Perl also having an infix deferenceing operator
is irrelevant.

--
Larry Rosler
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Larry_Rosler/
lr@hpl.hp.com



==== Want to unsubscribe from Fun With Perl?  Well, if you insist...
==== Send email to <fwp-request@technofile.org> with message _body_
====   unsubscribe