[Koha-devel] koha code cleaning bug?

[Joe Atzberger]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Galen Charlton <galen.charlton at liblime.com
> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Marc Chantreux
> <marc.chantreux at biblibre.com> wrote:
> > do you think that:
> >
> > for my $var ( list_generator ) {
> >    $var =~ /useless/;
> >    $var =~ s/old/new/;
> >    next unless -d $var;
> >    mkdir $_;
> > }
> >
> > is more readable than:
> >
> > for ( list_generator ) {
> >    /useless/;
> >    s/old/new/;
> >    next unless -d;
> >    mkdir $_;
> > }
>
> I do. :)


I don't.  I actually prefer the latter.  And if you construct the example
more conventionally, it should be obvious what the topic is without any
explanatory comment.

foreach (@directories) {
...
}



> > I think that be confortable with $_ (without abusing it) is a part of
> > the perl programmer skills set. If you don't, you'll never use such
> > usefull fonctions like grep and map.
>
> I agree that a Perl programmer ought to know how to use $_.  However,
> IMO the project needs to accept contributions from both expert and
> novice Perl programmers, and too much use of "punctuation" variables
> outside of the while (<FILE>) idiom reduces clarity.


I don't consider $_ at all an "advanced" construction.  It's proper use
should be common, certainly more common than other punctuation vars.  On
that note though, I don't see anything wrong with $! or $. either.  I'd much
prefer $. to $NR!  Feel free to use $INPUT_LINE_NUMBER if you want, but that
level of $VERBOSITY seems a bit too remedial for common usage.

Case in point though, here I agree it is better to add a variable rather
than assign to $_.  But more broadly, coding to avoid $_ altogether is
working against the language unnecessarily and, imho, unproductively.

-Joe
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