Deprecate barewords? #15061
Comments
From @epaCreated by @epaDoes anybody use barewords? I know that not everyone runs with 'use If there is a consensus that barewords are no longer useful, perhaps Perl Info |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 06:04:05AM -0800, Ed Avis wrote:
I use print STDERR "bla bla"; quite often. But if you're referring to unquoted strings, they already trigger $ perl -wE 'say STDERR 1 ? yes : nope' If you opt to run it without warnings, it won't warn, and just DWIM. Abigail |
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The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open' |
From @epaYes, by 'barewords' I meant to say the treatment of unquoted identifiers as strings, in cases where "use strict 'subs'" would give an error. That is not the case for STDERR. Barewords will give a warning "clash with future reserved word", but not if they have characters outside [a-z]. My question is first, whether anyone is still using this feature (I have never come across code that uses it outside of golfing and poetry, but I accept that different programmers have different styles), and if the answer to the first question is "no", whether it might be time to officially deprecate this feature. |
From @ap* Ed Avis <perlbug-followup@perl.org> [2015-11-23 15:05]:
As often disagree as I with you – this might actually be reasonable. I can’t remember seeing them used on purpose (outside of poetry, as you This seems a useful way to reduce the fraction of /dev/urandom output Of course this would first go on a branch and get a full CPAN smoke etc |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 06:53:30AM -0800, Ed Avis via RT wrote:
Are you going to ask the people who aren't reading p5p this as well, or What is the gain by making this a mandatory warning? If noone is using Abigail |
From Eirik-Berg.Hanssen@allverden.noOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> wrote:
It helps people who are not intentionally using this (mis-)feature, but Like, forgetting to import a constant, or misspelling its name … Eirik |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 05:40:41PM +0100, Eirik Berg Hanssen wrote:
Forcing warnings upon users who have choosen not to enable warnings Abigail |
From @epa
This is why I ask for views on whether this is still used and still useful. If people are still using barewords, then I withdraw the proposal. I have no wish to force warnings upon people who use barewords and have chosen not to see the warnings. If nobody is using it, it seems like a useful simplification (both in language spec and in implementation) to remove the dead wood, that is, to remove barewords from the language. To do so would require the usual deprecation cycle. |
From Eirik-Berg.Hanssen@allverden.noOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 5:43 PM, Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> wrote:
Not all who have not chosen to enable warnings have chosen not to enable If warnings were on by default, and had to be explicitly disabled, I'd Eirik |
From @ap* Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> [2015-11-23 16:50]:
None. But there may be gain in making it a syntax error. |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 05:56:04PM +0100, Eirik Berg Hanssen wrote:
If everyone who doesn't enable warnings didn't chose to do so, you may Taken away *choice* from *everyone* just so someone somewhere may have Besides, if that's the argument, why just this warning? Why not make I'd say issue a deprecation warning once we have a schedule were the Abigail |
From Eirik-Berg.Hanssen@allverden.noOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> wrote:
The choice is not taken away – you just need to make it yourself: $ perl -E 'sub foo :locked { }' Eirik |
From @epa
I think in the case of barewords the replacement feature has been present in Perl for a while... Instead of print hello; you should, in the new way of doing things, write print 'hello';
Indeed not. It may however be a case of: nobody whatsoever uses this style, and so it is not doing any good to keep it (while it does cruft up the language somewhat). Hence this request. To reiterate: I am *asking* whether anybody uses barewords. If they are still used, then close this bug and keep them. |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 10:00:59AM -0800, Ed Avis via RT wrote:
Bad example. The first one writes $_ to the handle named hello, the
But you will never know who does, or does not, use this style. And And by all means, if you have good reasons why this syntax should be Just issueing a mandatory warning only annoys people, but doesn't I'm not opposed removing this feature if there're good reasons. I'm Abigail |
From @epaActually, I would expect p5-porters to be the place most likely to find users of odd language quirks like barewords. Tom Christiansen was perhaps the only Perl programmer still using the 'do SUBROUTINE(LIST)' form, in some presumably ancient scripts. (Note that it ended up being deprecated despite still having at least one active user.) Of course you are right that the readers of the list don't have exhaustive knowledge of all Perl code still in existence, and can't say for sure whether barewords are not still used somewhere, but that is true for every language change. I am not suggesting to add a warning for the sake of a warning. I am suggesting to remove barewords from the language, if indeed they are completely unused and unwanted by anyone. Naturally, the first step in removing them would be to add a deprecation warning, but that is not the end point. There are reasons to get rid of barewords, which I would be happy to discuss, but I think a necessary first step is a quick survey to see if any of the p5-porters, at least, are still using them or know of code which still uses them. |
From @ikegamiOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 9:30 AM, Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> wrote:
Neither "print" nor "STDERR" are barewords in that program. A bareword is |
From @bulk88On Mon Nov 23 06:53:30 2015, ed wrote:
https://metacpan.org/release/BULKDD/Acme-Win32-PEPM-0.02 uses them to pack .pm files. I've attached a sample packed .pm. -- |
From @maukeAm 23.11.2015 um 20:49 schrieb bulk88 via RT:
How much of that magic is fixed bytes? Because if it's just two bytes -- |
From @exodistI can think of one place where people may be accidentally using this, and use Foo xxx, yyy, -foo; If you use strict and warnings before that then it will fail. However if I am not making a judgement call on weather people SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do -Chad On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:57 AM, Lukas Mai <plokinom@gmail.com> wrote:
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From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 01:43:05PM -0500, Eric Brine wrote:
The output of "perldoc -f print" contains the following phrase: If you're storing handles in an array or hash, or in general If "STDERR" isn't a bareword, then which bareword is this phrase Abigail |
From @AbigailOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 12:00:53PM -0800, Chad Granum wrote:
Here's another accidental way: $ perl -le '$x = 'foo'; print $x' Abigail |
From @bulk88On Mon Nov 23 11:58:25 2015, plokinom@gmail.com wrote:
Just the first 2 bytes are magic, not the semicolon. Someone a while ago told me to use : and make it an unused label but I've never tried it. To fit "MZ() if 0;", I'd have to shorten the do not edit comment. There are only 2 free bytes (as spaces) before the binary escaping heredoc. The binary escaping heredoc must escape bytes 0x3C/60-0x3F/63 so it can not be moved. -- |
From @cpansproutOn Mon Nov 23 10:00:59 2015, ed wrote:
I, for one, have many legacy programs that use them. I really do not want to have to sift through them and clean them up. If all new programs use strict, then such a removal would not affect any new code anyway, whether positively or negatively. -- Father Chrysostomos |
From @epaAbigail is right: STDERR is called a 'bareword filehandle'. I should have said 'deprecate barewords-as-strings'. Although an Acme-namespace module might not be enough by itself to establish a current 'use' of this feature, if F.C. has plenty of code that relies on treating barewords as strings, I guess that vetoes the proposal. I do still think that Perl's grammar has some musty corners that can be cleaned up, of which bareword strings are one example. But I would not push through such a change against existing, working code. IMHO the warning on 'future reserved word' is a bit useless and could be scrapped, but I will file a separate bug for that. |
From @ikegamiOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Abigail <abigail@abigail.be> wrote:
It's referring to "STDERR", but STDERR is not a bareword there. "A word |
From @ap* Eric Brine <ikegami@adaelis.com> [2015-11-23 22:45]:
There is exactly one place in the docs which says that, and literally Bad doc, indeed. |
From @epaActually, the phrase 'bareword filehandles' is common usage. |
From @tonycozOn Mon Nov 23 13:11:57 2015, ed wrote:
Ok, closing. Tony |
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@tonycoz - Status changed from 'open' to 'rejected' |
Migrated from rt.perl.org#126715 (status was 'rejected')
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