perlmeditation muba A couple of nights ago, I was thinking a little, about Perl, about programming in general, about operators (especially "and" and "or" (or their higher precedence brothers "&&" and "||")) and I thought I would like a "but" operator. I told that to my girlfriend.<BR><BR> Well, she's no programmer but she does understand a programmer's way of thinking and she has some understanding of boolean logic.<BR><BR> So I told her I would like a "but" operator. Then she said, "that wouldn't be quite usefull, because that would make you able to say (pseudocode) <CODE> not EXPR-THIS but EXPR-THAT </CODE> or <CODE> EXPR-THAT but not EXPR-THIS </CODE> and in that case, you could as well just say <CODE> EXPR-THAT </CODE>."<BR><BR> Hmm, I thought. You are pretty right, actually. Then I discoverd that the importing mechanism does have something like a "but" operator (<CODE>use MyModule qw(:standard !somesub)</CODE>). But (&lt;-- there it is) I didn't enjoy that one as much as a true "but" operator that would work a little like "and" and "or".<BR><BR> A long story made short: I (er... my girlfriend) concluded a "but" operator would be useless and I think it's a pity. I still like the abstract idea of having such a thing.<BR><BR> Whatever. <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-333489"> <BR><BR><BR><BR> <CODE>"2b"||!"2b";$$_="the question"</CODE><BR> Besides that, my code is untested unless stated otherwise.<BR> One more: please review the [id://383015|article about regular expressions (do's and don'ts) I'm working on]. </div></div>