Re: [PATCH RFC 0/5] Patches to avoid reporting conversion changes.

From: Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net>
Date: Apr 16, 2010, 18:02 UTC
Message-ID: <874ojbqnry.fsf@jondo.cante.net>
In-Reply-To: <cover.1271432034.git.grubba@grubba.org>

merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

>>>>>> "Jari" == Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:
>
> Jari> It would be interesting to know why not. These magic variables are hard
> Jari> to read and remember without consulting the manual pages.
>
> Because it was observed over time that the aliases were *also* hard to
> remember without consulting the manpages. :)
>
> So you were merely trading one problem for another, and since far more
> code is out there that does *not* use English than does, we agreed that
> use English was an interesting but failed experiment.

Who found out? In what study?

Honestly, that's not believable. There is no way reading the most common alphabetic variables would not be readable over puctuation:

    $OUTPUT_AUTOFLUSH = 1;
    if ( $OS_ERROR ) ...
    if ( $EVAL_ERROR ) ...
    open(...)   or die "$ERRNO"

Versus:

    $| = 1;
    if ($?) ...
    if ($@) ...
    open(...) or die $!

It *may* be the case with exotic (seldomly used) ones, but they are even more exotic in they short form:

     print $^V;

Eh?

    print $PERL_VERSION;

I compute sir, Jari