[petre]

> Languages often use '+' for both numeric addition and string concatenation

Perl uses . or ~ depending on which version you are using. It also uses braces for code blocks and postfixed ifs which prevents errors like:

  if (x)
    y
  z

Instead of:

  if (x)
    y
    z

It prides itself to being close to natural language yet still uses braces.

[kbenson]

I'm aware, and Perl is specifically what I had in mind when I noted that. It's a little different of a case in Perl than in a language that is more strongly typed, like Python, as Perl uses operators to cast into the appropriate types for the operation and Python makes it an explicit action (which is why Perl has separate operators for most string and numeric operations, such as < and lt, > and gt, == and eq, etc). A Python programmer without much experience in Perl might think this is a case of implicit action, but it's actually rather explicit, as the string and numeric specific operators explicitly define exactly what to do with the two operands.

It's a pet peeve of mine that languages have promoted + for addition and string concatenation when concatenation and addition are distinct concepts that don't really share a lot in common beyond the surface. To me, in new languages, it signals that someone likely hasn't thought through that issue very clearly, or has and just doesn't care about consistency (which I think it important in a language). Python at least has the excuse of age (even if it's not all that old compared to many others).