«

my $variable = 'fill in blanks';
my $question = q^
One of the very useful features of perl is the quotelike
operator, because it makes it very easy to create a
"subdocument within a document" ... which brings up
a question, does any other programming language have
anything even close to this functionality?

Python has the triple-quote feature, which is nice, but
still creates minor hassles if you want to want to output
a triple-quote inside your 'subdocument' (use-versus-mention).

XML has CDATA sections, which suck, and suffer from
(use-versus-mention) as well.

Moreover, none of them make it easy to ^.$variable.q^ with
variables.

Is there any other programming environment that has this
feature? Can anyone name even one??

Why doesn't every programming environment have a similar
feature? Adding 'escape sequences' to strings is
error-prone, less readable, and annoying!
^;

print $question;

valued customer wrote:

> Is there any other programming environment that has this
> feature? Can anyone name even one??

Perl borrowed the "here document" idea from UNIX shells like Bash, CSH, etc.
I think it would be a bit of a stretch to refer to that as a "programming
environment," though.

I think Python and Ruby support the idea too.

> Why doesn't every programming environment have a similar
> feature?

It's arguably less useful than one might think at first. When you're dealing
with really large output strings - such as the one in your message - it
often makes more sense to use a template-oriented approach, with the
strings in an external file.

sherm--

--
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org

valued customer <> wrote:


> One of the very useful features of perl is the quotelike
> operator,


It's more usual name is "here document".


> Is there any other programming environment that has this
> feature? Can anyone name even one??


Most (all?) of the *nix shells.


> Why doesn't every programming environment have a similar
> feature? Adding 'escape sequences' to strings is
> error-prone, less readable, and annoying!


Because non-Perl languages suck. (heh)


--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas

Sherm Pendley wrote:
> valued customer wrote:
>
>
>>Is there any other programming environment that has this
>>feature? Can anyone name even one??
>
>
> Perl borrowed the "here document" idea from UNIX shells like Bash, CSH, etc.
> I think it would be a bit of a stretch to refer to that as a "programming
> environment," though.

I don't think the OP was talking about heredocs. He mentioned
"quote-like operators" which, to me at least, refers to q// and qq//
which are different from heredocs. His remark seems to refer to the fact
that Perl gives you the option to use your favourite delimiter which is
very useful. I don't know of any other languages that offers this.

That's not to say heredocs aren't useful. They are very useful, but
different from q// and qq//.

--Ala

Ala Qumsieh wrote:

> Sherm Pendley wrote:
>
>> valued customer wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Is there any other programming environment that has this
>>> feature? Can anyone name even one??
>>
>>
>>
>> Perl borrowed the "here document" idea from UNIX shells like Bash,
>> CSH, etc.
>> I think it would be a bit of a stretch to refer to that as a "programming
>> environment," though.
>
>
> I don't think the OP was talking about heredocs. He mentioned
> "quote-like operators" which, to me at least, refers to q// and qq//
> which are different from heredocs. His remark seems to refer to the fact
> that Perl gives you the option to use your favourite delimiter which is
> very useful. I don't know of any other languages that offers this.

Ruby has %q(abc) equal to 'abc' (and %q(a(b)c) equal to 'a(b)c'),
%Q(abc\n) equal to "abc\n" (and %Q(a(b)c\n) equal to "a(b)c\n"),
and %/abc\n/ equal to "abc\n".

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html

In article <>, Tad McClellan wrote:
> valued customer <> wrote:
>
>
>> One of the very useful features of perl is the quotelike
>> operator,
>
>
> It's more usual name is "here document".

First, the OP seems to be talking about q{} and friends, rather than
here docs.

Second, here docs weren't even in perlop at all, much less under Quote
and Quote-like Operators until fairly recently, which makes it even less
likely that that's what was meant.

Finally, "It's"?? Oh, Tad, I know you know better than that...

dha

--
David H. Adler - <> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
Linguists don't know much, but they do know that nobody can succeed in
telling people at large how to speak. - Larry Wall

Ala Qumsieh <> said:
>I don't think the OP was talking about heredocs. He mentioned
>"quote-like operators" which, to me at least, refers to q// and qq//
>which are different from heredocs. His remark seems to refer to the fact
>that Perl gives you the option to use your favourite delimiter which is
>very useful. I don't know of any other languages that offers this.

I guess that the freedom to use your delimiter of choice comes from
'sed', the regex-based stream editor in Unix environments. Even
though sed regexes are commonly written with / as the delimiter,
any delimiter can be used (f.ex. ':' is a good choice when the
patterns contain Unix directory paths -- as long as you can be
certain that the paths never contain ':').

s:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:g is so much easier to read than
s/\/usr\/bin/\/usr\/local\/bin/g -- esp. if you have a need to
have the above in a context where backslashes must be escaped,
leaving you with
s/\\/usr\\/bin/\\/usr\\/local\\/bin/g .
--
Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland
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"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)