TITLE

with takes a context

VERSION

  Maintainer: David Nicol <perl6rfc@davidnicol.com>
  Date: 28 Sep 2000
  Mailing List: perl6-language@perl.org
  Number: 340
  Version: 1
  Status: Developing

ABSTRACT

"call frames" become useful as objects. The current one is always with with no argument and you can get into an arbitrary one by using with $whatever BLOCK in either forward or backward form, like if.

DESCRIPTION =item description by commented example

        sub A{
                my $A = shift;
                return with;
        };

        $context1 = A(3);
        print "$context1";              # something like CONTEXT(0XF0GD0G)
        print "$A" with $context1;      # prints 3
        with $context1{print "$A"};     # same thing

coexistence w/ pascal-like with: The context-access with takes a scalar argument, the pascal-like with takes a hash. If the pascal-like with is considered as describing aliases to defined variables, the two have deep similarities.
CONTEXT objects in other contexts: In an array context, one of these CONTEXT things will expand into key-value pairs if it can.
warning about memory leaks: using with to store contexts may adversely affect memory recycling.

IMPLEMENTATION

Perl5 has the hooks required to do this: the closure stuff. This proposed with keyword makes access into such things more explicit.

REFERENCES

None.