Why will v-strings be deprecated

[ambrus]

According to perl-5.8.1/pod/perldelta.pod the v-strings might be deprecated in later versions of perl. I do not understand why. I use v-strings on command line because v10 is much easier to input on keyboard then "\n". Pascal has a similar feature, the Pascal folks can write "hello world".v10 like this: 'hello world'#10

[Abigail-II]

But 'v10' also looks like a bareword. Consider this:

sub u11 {"u11"}
sub v11 {"v11"}
sub w11 {"w11"}

print u11, v11, w11, v10;
__END__
u11v11w11

And that includes the new line.

There are more things that cause more confusion than they solve peoples problems:

print 65.66;    # prints '65.66'
print 65.66.67; # prints 'ABC'

And while you can use print v10 to print a newline, you can't use it to print two newlines (as opposed to one string with two newlines):

print v10;      # prints newline.
print v10, v10; # "No comma allowed after filehandle"

Abigail

[ambrus]

You're right. I think 10v would've been a better syntax instead of v10. Letters after numbers could be used for some interesting purposes: for example 3a could be short for $_[3].

[Dietz]

And while you can use print v10 to print a newline, you can't use it to print two newlines (as opposed to one string with two newlines):

print v10;      # prints newline. 
print v10, v10; # "No comma allowed after filehandle"




For this purpose the following works:


print v10 x 2; # prints 2 newlines

Or even:

print v10 x 1, v10; # also prints 2 newlines

[broquaint]

The v-strings must die! thread on the p5p mailing list gives a pretty good summary of the whys and wherefores of the deprecation of v-strings.

[bart]

I think that this quote from that P5P message applies perfectly to the OP's usage:

Further, people keep finding edge cases with v-strings and using them wrong.

v-strings are not intended to compose Ascii characters with.

[tye]

To save time, you can jump right to the summary and then hit "Thread Next" to get the nail in the coffin (where the creator of v-strings admits that they must go).

                - tye

[hardburn]

Maybe it's easier to type, but "\n" is a lot more readable. I don't want to have to look up an ASCII table just to understand your code.

[shenme]

I've picked up on other people using $/ to avoid quoting difficulties.   It can be a problem getting the quoting right on Win command lines.   Using

    perl -e "print 'Hello World!',$/"

works nicely.

[BrowserUk]

Even easier:)

 perl -le "print 'Hello World!'"

[Xiong]

Easiest (assuming you have more than one output statement in your script):

# THIS
use feature 'say';
# OR
use 5.10.0;

# THEN
say 'Hello, World!';

Perl6::Say fails Build test, at least for me.

[ambrus]

This is a good trick, I wouldn't have tought of it. I knew about perl -le.