Perl is worse!
Alex Martelli
alex at magenta.com
Fri Jul 28 11:49:02 EDT 2000
"Grant Edwards" <ge at nowhere.none> wrote in message
news:KPgg5.2640$6E.682060 at ptah.visi.com...
> In article <8lrt2h013fp at news2.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> >> whereas 1 + "foo" is meaningless to almost everyone except Perl coders.
> >
> >No way -- it's perfectly valid in C, too, except that there it means the
> >constant-string "oo". Really, truly, X my heart, I kid you not, check it
> >out if you don't believe me (I wouldn't blame you for disbelieving
this!).
>
> I would assert that although 1 + "foo" is meaningful to the C
> _compiler_, it is still meaningless to almost "everyone" (as in
> people) except Perl coders, and probably meaningless to most of
> them as well.
I think you underestimate the amount of "Obfuscated C" participants
who have not been Perl coders. 1+"foo" and 1["foo"] are very
meaningful kinds of constructs to obfuscators!-)
What I don't understand is, rather...:
$foo = ++$bar;
versus
$foo = 1 + $bar;
How much sense can it make to have those two constructs leave
totally different values in $foo? Yet, if $bar starts out as "foo", the
former makes $foo worth "fop", the latter makes it worth 1. Now,
THAT is the way to let a creative obfuscator show his mettle.
Alex
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