Re: One more item to the collection of Lua hate-speech

[David Manura <dm.lua@...>]

On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 10:29 AM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> David Manura <dm.lua@math2.org> writes:
>> The "Huffman encoding" language design principle in Perl says that
>> common operations should have shorter syntax than less common
>> operations.
>
> So if Perl did not look like line noise, it would be a sign that this
> design principle was not yet fully heeded.

I think the emphasis here is more on a relative rather than just
absolute length and it doesn't mandate using non-alphanumeric tokens
or maximizing absolute density at the expense of readability like in
APL (compare: [1][2]).  Lua patterns, BTW, might also be called
line-noise, "^<%w+>([^<]+)</%w+>$", and this is one area where Perl 6
has strived to avoid being "too compact and cute" [3].

[1] http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/periodic/ - Periodic table of Perl operators
[2] http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/HenryRich?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=J602_RefCard_color_letter_current.pdf
- J Reference Card
[3] http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/design/apo/A05.html