Why use Perl when we've got Python?!

[Eric Bohlman]

John W. Stevens (jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com) wrote:
[quoting someone whose name was lost]
: > It is wrong from the Larry's principle that things that behave
: > differently should have different appearances.
: 
: Then why doesn't Perl have two different operations for
: assign/reassign, vs. add to an array?  A tiny little violation of
: Larry's principles, that.

Nope.  "Behave differently" hear means "accomplish two different tasks."  
Comparing two strings to see if they're equal lexically is not the same 
task as comparing two strings to see if they're equal numerically.  
Putting a particular value in a particular position in an array that 
already holds a value *is* the same task as putting a particular value in 
a particular position of an array that does not yet hold a value; the 
only difference is in the internal details of how to accomplish it.

Of course, the OOically-correct way to handle the string comparisons is 
to define a base class, ComparableString, and two subclasses, 
LexicallyComparableSting and NumericallyComparableString, along with 
polymorphic operators that understand which class they're comparing to 
and apply the correct comparison method.  But there are cases where you 
may want to do *both* comparisons on a string, and to be OC you then have 
to cast the string to the appropriate type; the Perlish way of picking 
the operator director is IMHO easier and more maintainable; in my 
experience, heavy casting makes code unreadable.