See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_function_call_syntax - the examples ...

johnisgood · 2025-07-03T10:27:17 1751538437

I love Perl[1] and OCaml. I dislike the rest. It depends on the task.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44359539

> As for idup... The first several search results for "dlang idup" are all useful.

Yes, I am sure it was, I am sure an LLM would have helped too, but I think that is besides the point here.

zdragnar · 2025-07-03T17:57:48 1751565468

Is it beside the point? Looking at that perl example:

$string =~ s/\d+/NUM/g;

I don't have a clue what is going on. Sure, I see the regex, but what is =~ doing?

There's only so far you can stretch most languages before you need to actually put in effort to learn them.

johnisgood · 2025-07-04T10:33:59 1751625239

"=~" is the operator testing a regular expression match. It should be obvious, because on the right side you see regex, and you ought to know what "=" or "==" does.

FWIW, I knew this as a kid, too, despite knowing absolutely nothing about the language at the time.

Anyways, you should read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44463391 if you care about why I dislike the way D does it.