in reply to What operator should perl5porters use for safe dereferencing?
We have the // and //= operators which work like a 'defined' short circuit, otherwise emulating || and ||=.
On your list of options I don't see ones that kind of stand out as being of similar encoding: //->, and -//>
The concerns are that they start looking like the closing side of a markup tag, and that the version I like the most would become Perl's only four-contiguous-character non-alpha operator (that I can think of).
What I don't like with respect to any of the ~ options is that they feel like they should be doing some form of matching: pattern, smart, or even dereferencing-lookup matching (which is what -> already does as it scans the inheritance tree).
Dave
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