Re: [MacPerl] FNG

[Vicki Brown <vlb@cfcl.com>]

<x-flowed>At 21:20 -0500 1/27/99, Chris Nandor wrote:
> At 19.51 -0500 1999.01.27, Vicki Brown wrote:
>>As sayeth the Camel, container of all knowledge (p. 38)
>>
>>   While we might speak of a scalar as "containing" a number or a string,
>>   scalars are essentially typeless; there's no way to declare a scalar of
>>   type "number" or "string". Perl converts between the various subtypes as
>>   needed, so you can treat a number as a string or a string as a number,
>>   and Perl will do the Right Thing.
>
> We know, of course, this is not true, since these are different:
>
>   ~'1'
>   ~1


How does the fact that these are different (one has been forced to be 
a string, the other hasn't) make the statement from the Camel untrue? 
It would seem to me that this example proves rather than disproves 
the point.  Perl merrily converts.  As I said, what Perl considers to 
be the Right Thing may not be what we mere mortals had in mind...

- Vicki
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