Re: = at Start of Line ([svn:perl6-synopsis] r14421 - doc/trunk/design/syn) In article <20070616084404.GF6900@stripey.com>, Smylers  wrote: > brian d foy writes: >  > > In article > > <832f158a0706141722o5f68cf09l724d4f4520ee146@mail.gmail.com>, Damian > > Conway  wrote: > >  > > > No. It's Pod. *Any* line that begins with '=begin' always starts a Pod > > > block. Always. > >  > > As you know, one of the biggest complaints about Perl is that you have > > to have a lot of special rules knowledge to figure some things out. >  > Indeed.  What's much nicer is to be able to state that a given rule > "always" applies. Well, now explain literal strings :)  This isn't about one rule, it's about an ecosystem. The rules for Pod5 always applied too, so I don't see what we've gained here as far as the simplicity of rules (but let's not go round-and-round on that since we've both already explained our positions). > Like Damian has just done here. This is a point where a lot of people will disagree, I suppose, and it's a fundamental sort of disagreeement where neither side will really be convinced otherwise. I don't think this is stubbornness either, but reflects what people value most. That is, nobody is really wrong, because we'd have to define some way to measure that, and we're really disagreeing on the yard stick. Putting aside this particular situation, the argument comes down to where does the water balloon pooch out? We haven't lost any complexity, it's just in different places. Maybe some places need less complexity and some places could stand a little more. Now, in this particular situation, Pod is much easier to extract, but literal strings now have extra baggage to consider. That's not what we're debating though. The real debate is whether you think moving the complexity around like that is worth it.  Personally, extracting Pod from Perl 5 hasn't been a problem for me (and I do a lot of Pod work and write lots of custom Pod translators), so I don't think this re-distribution is worth it. I don't have to answer many questions about extracting Pod, and I don't see many normal people (meaning, not us) asking for easier ways to do this. I don't see a motivation, for the perspective of normal people, for this. When we through around terms like "natural language", normal people matter. :) You and Damian have explained the other side very well. I understand it, and it's very easy for me to understand and even deal with. We just disagree on the consequences.  I tend to think that people like us are here to do the hard work so other people don't have to think about this sort of stuff, so I don't mind putting the complexity in the the parser if it takes it out of the common program elements such as strings.