Re: perl should be improved and perl6

A. Sinan Unur wrote:
"Gordon Etly" <get@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:65v00iF2i1cpsU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Abigail wrote:
_
Gordon Etly (get@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote on VCCCXXXIII September
MCMXCIII in <URL:news:65t6g3F2huv6jU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

This last quote is contradicted by the main Perl document,
that gives the "NAME" of the language as:

"perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language"

Which IS an acronym.

No, it's not.

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. (Please see below.)

No he is not.

The documentation disagrees with you both then.

This is reminding me of a friend who used to pronounce doughnut
as duf-nut because he thought the '-ough' in both dough and
tough ought to sound the same.

Ok. But what does this have to do with how the

He was able to advance many logical arguments why he was right,
but, alas, he was wrong.

The correct answer is the one adopted by native Perl
speakers whether you find that logical or not:

Ok, nice analogy, but in this case, it's you who are in your friend's
position, arguing against the written authoritative documentation.
Perl's own _docs_ spell out an acronym, so please stop ignoring this.

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq1.html#What's-the-difference-between-%22perl%22-and-%22Perl%22%3f

You seem to have missed this part:

"You may or may not choose to follow this usage"


And,

"But never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym",

is completely contrary to what 'perldoc perl' says:


http://perldoc.perl.org/perl.html

NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

Which spells out a meaning for each letter, so hence, an acronym. Using
"perl" or "PERL" can denote such an acronym, so stop saying it's wrong
to use any of those forms.

That FAQ should be corrected because it is wrong. The main documentation
should always carry more weight than user-contributed content, should it
not?

Even Larry himself dubbed Perl as meaning what the NAME line says it is,
so why continue to push something that is proven wrong by both it's
top-most document and it's creator?

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394

"Eventually I came up with the name "pearl", with the gloss
Practical Extraction and Report Language"

This is, by any definition, an acronym, spelled out in full. Given that
the 'a' was dropped, you get P-E-R-L out of it.

--
G.Etly


.

Relevant Pages

  • ANNOUNCE - Muldis::DB v0.0.0 released, in p5+p6
    ... I am pleased to announce the release of Muldis::DB version 0.0.0 for Perl 5 on CPAN. ... If you want to read all the Muldis::DB documentation that exists now, I recommend doing so in this order: ... Muldis::DB implements a D language as defined by Hugh Darwen and Chris Date, and presents a superior interface for working with the relational model of data, contrasted with SQL. ...
    (perl.dbi.users)
  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... %% Practical Extraction and Report Language" ... %% This is, by any definition, an acronym, spelled out in full. ... Report Language' *FIRST*, then took the starting letters to make a word. ... of 'Perl'. ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... It's the very fact this document ships with Perl that validates the ... usage of Perl/perl/PERL as an acronym. ... But I heard rumors of some obscure graphics language named ... time act as if the documentation Perl ships with means something. ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: How to use select (select(2)) in Perl?
    ... }> global-assignment *across* a package does. ... Perhaps we could agree that the ONLY real change in the documentation ... } very thin wraper around that, that provides a Perlish interface. ... } be willing to bet that if perl hadn't had select in the first place, ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: Wait for background processes to complete
    ... especially the ones about the Perl Documentation being ... There is no further reference to a "double fork" (except in the ... There is a general problem with perl documentation: ... and what the child should do depend on what you want them to do. ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)