[Koha-devel] Perl syntax for strings

[Thomas Klausner]

Hi!

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 10:19:12AM +0200, Fridolin SOMERS wrote:
 
> I see in Perl code some cases where a string in written with a space between
> q or qq or qw and string.
> Like : qq /foo bar/ instead of qq/foo bar/

While this works, it is strongly recommended to not use this "feature". 
It's main "use" is to use ANY string as quote-like operator:

perl -E 'say qq A({/";A'
({/";

But of course this is horrible and should not be used (outside of 
obfuscations..)

> Most of cases are in :
>   use CGI qw ( -utf8 );

This isn't even using the "feature" to allow any string..

> There are only 29 other cases :
>   git grep -E ' q[qw]? [/({]' | grep -v 'use CGI qw '

Of course this regex would fail to find why the space after q/qq/qw is 
allowed, because using the space you can use ANY char for the quote-like 
op. But I'm quite sure that nobody is crazy enough to put that into 
production code. And coming up with a regex that matches this would be 
quite hard... Though maybe there is a Perl::Critic rule for it?

> Should we add a coding guideline ?
> https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines

++

Greetings,
domm

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl                             https://domm.plix.at
for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}