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Re: Stupid mistakes I repeatedly make

by guha (Priest)
on Mar 30, 2005 at 20:22 UTC ( [id://443600]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Stupid mistakes I repeatedly make

My most irritating mistake concerns the use of x, the repetition operator.

my $multiple_Zs = 7 x 'Z'; ##Wrong

[download]
instead of 
my $multiple_Zs = 'Z' x 7; ##Correct

[download]

I'm not sure but I guess this has something to do with that English is not my first language. I think the natives read it as "Z times 7" and then is DWIMs. In Swedish it spoken the other way around. But all in all, this is one of only a few cases where Perl NDWIM.

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Re^2: Stupid mistakes I repeatedly make
by ihb (Deacon) on Mar 30, 2005 at 21:52 UTC

    In Swedish it spoken the other way around.

    I disagree, and being swedish I can do that. :-) Maybe you think like that, but not everyone does. "Times" in swedish, "gånger", is just as commutative as "times". A hypothesis is that one may think like that because that's how one often does it when being taught algebra in school: 7a + 3b = 2c.

    If you don't look at it like multiplication but rather as "repeated ... times" it perhaps would be easier to remember.

    ihb

    See perltoc if you don't know which perldoc to read!

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