Re: Computer Language Question

>On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 05:57:02PM -0500, Erich Rickheit KSC wrote:
>> H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> > Wait till you see a badly-written Perl script. ;-)
>> > [Disclaimer: I like Perl.]
>>
>> Actually, I think Perl is interesting, as it's the only programming
>> language I'm familiar with that has case markings.
>
>It doesn't. It just has number markings. Or, more precisely, it has
>"grammatical gender", which is what $, @, and  really are. And it's not
>the first language to do this, too. Applesoft BASIC, from the old days,
>suffixed string variables with $. I forget if it explicitly marked
>numerical variables, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Old basics had something like $ for a string, % for a boolean, & for a number...
here it is some kind of gender marker. A$ is a string variable which has
nothing to do with A%

Perl is different. thoses afixes do not indicate the nature of the variable, but
the way you want to use it. the SAME variable takes $ if accessed as a whole,
or @ for accessing as a list (in which case you can access its elements), or %
if it is accessed as a hash. It definitly refer to the same entity, but with
different aproches. To call this gender do not seems appropriate. But case
marker either. Because it can always act as an "object" of the "verb". So we
are on something different. But i can not think of what feature of human
languages could be considered similar.

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