TITLE

Remove "In string @ must be \@" fatal error

VERSION

  Maintainer: Nathan Wiger <nate@wiger.org>
  Date: 15 Aug 2000
  Last-Modified: 16 Sep 2000
  Mailing List: perl6-language@perl.org
  Number: 105
  Version: 2
  Status: Frozen

ABSTRACT

Currently, if you write:

   $email = "nate@wiger.org";

You get a fatal error:

   In string, @wiger now must be written as \@wiger

This should be removed altogether in Perl 6.

DESCRIPTION

This is something that was put in to catch Perl 4 to Perl 5 migration. Perl 6 shouldn't need it, and should just assume that "@wiger" is an array, even if it's unitialized. This is what it does for all the other data types.

As Randal noted, this whole RFC is probably better phrased as:

   array interpolation should work exactly like scalar interpolation

And I agree.

MIGRATION

People that are relying on this to catch sloppy coding should be beaten.

IMPLEMENTATION

Remove the error altogether. Perl 5's been out for years.

REFERENCES

http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/1998-07/msg02150.html

hfile//www.mail-archive.com/perl6-language@perl.org/msg02231.html