The translate operator (was Re: [MacPerl] regex help)

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Sun, Nov 28, 1999 at 11:03:47AM -0500, Chris Nandor wrote:
> At 15.53 -0500 1999.11.27, Ronald J Kimball wrote:
> >On Sat, Nov 27, 1999 at 11:06:01AM -0800, Don Arbow wrote:
> 
> >>  First, you're not using translate correctly.  You appear to want to
> 
> >This is almostly entirely incorrect.
> 
> Also, tr/// does not mean "translate."  Well, some people think it does.
> Historically, I believe it has meant "transliterate."  I don't say this to
> be pedantic, but to note there is little agreement on it, and it is safer
> to just call it "tr".

In fact, I would say it the other way around: tr/// does not mean
"transliterate", but some people think it does.  I believe that at least
one source of Perl inspiration called its equivalent operator "translate",
and at least one called it "transliterate", which is why this confusion
exists.

Some time ago, certain people pushed on p5p to change the documentation
from "translate" to "transliterate".  Since transliterate specifically
means to spell in the characters of another alphabet, and tr/// involves
neither spelling nor alphabets, this change made no sense.  "translate" is
correct, "transliterate" is not.  Oh well.


Ronald

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