It seems like you're talking about LISP. Isn't a Cons a simple pair set? And wasn't LISP originally simply a mathematical proof? (Forgive my naivetie, I don't know much about LISP, and have used it only in mutant forms).

"From a practical standpoint, the only real difference between a feature that's in the core language and a feature that's in a core library is the extra commands required to include the library, and how awkward the syntax is."

I'm not exploring what happens to the language when things are removed from the core, but rather if anything useful can happen to programmers and the way they program when the internal representation changes.

But actually, I'm not even exploring that. I'm trying to figure out what Perl programmers can do if Perl represented scalars and hashes as lists.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.