Is Perl *that* good?

[Peter Hansen]

Roy Smith wrote:

> In article <noydnQuaxutgNxPdRVn-hw at powergate.ca>,
>  Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>>Wouldn't that be a fairly trivial class to write, and use
>>in your own code?
> 
> It would be.  And everybody would invent their own flavor.  Putting it 
> into the core means everybody does it the same way, so everybody's code 
> is easier to understand and maintain.

Which is the same tired argument that people always seem to use,
thinking it somehow justifies putting something into the core.

The "to keep people from inventing their own flavor" argument
is only useful if lots of folks are already doing this!

This is actually the first time in recent years that I can recall
that someone has complained about having to make up a new variable
(which is as good as free) to hold the result of a match.  If
lots more people do it and we start getting a situation where
there are a half dozen ways to spell the same thing, *then* it's
time to consider a PEP or something, or standardizing one of
the approaches and putting it in the core.

-Peter