Splitter quiz / survey

[Benji Smith]

Brad Roberts wrote:
> Actually, perl is a risky language to take _syntax_ from, but _semantics_ 
> aren't nearly as dangerous.  Obviously there's some semantics that are 
> horrible (see it's OOP mechanisms), but parts of the rest are quite good.  
> I grip and groan every time I find myself having to touch perl code, but 
> it's rarely due to non-syntactical issues.

This is one of my favorite rants, anywhere on the world wide internets:

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/ancient-languages-perl

If nothing else, at least read the "Snake Eyes" section.

It's not the syntax that make perl so bad. Sure, it takes some getting 
used to. But when the rubber hits the road, it's just syntax, and anyone 
can learn it.

The semantics, though, are a complete and utter trainwreck. Even after 
two years of working at a company where perl was the primary development 
language, I still never felt comfortable unless I had the camel book 
within arm's reach.

But amid that insanity there are a few gems. Most notably: regular 
expressions. And string splitting is largely based on the regex engine. 
So it's not too shocking to me that D might be influenced by it.

On the other hand, I agree with most of the other people in this thread, 
that option (4) was the best of the possible splitting behaviors.

--benji