Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954)[1] is an American computer programmer, linguist and author. He is best known for creating the Perl programming language and the patch tool. (wikipedia)
Odd that we think definitions are definitive.
Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.
The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other.
Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.
Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.
And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is.
The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.
Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.