Golf Do-s and Don't-s

With the onslaught of golf meditations recently (of which I shall soon be posting one -- fear not!), I'm posting a set of reminders that you may be wont to take heed of, ere you post again!

if you use a regex, be sure . can match a newline, by using the /s modifier to the regex
pop is two characters less than shift
assign to @_ and $_ if you can -- it saves a my declaration (if you're stingy), and allows operations like regexes and pop to work without an argument
screw $1 and the like, and use $& and its friends instead
map() is probably a useful tool to master for golf
leave out semicolons wherever possible
don't explicitly return unless you must
doing .$/ is shorter than ."\n" -- same for .$" vs. ." "
{...;redo} is shorter than while(1){...}
{...;$x&&redo} is shorter than while($x){...}
use || and &&

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

Comment on Golf Do-s and Don't-s

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Golf Do-s and Don't-s by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Apr 03, 2002 at 15:03 UTC
A few questions on technique: Is there anything shorter than `join'',`? What are some good sorting techniques? ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Golf Do-s and Don't-s by Anonymous Monk on Mar 09, 2005 at 10:03 UTC
Is there anything shorter than `join'',`? It depends. This: `$"="";"@_"` [download] is one character more than `join"",@_` [download] but if you have to do two joins, `$"="";"@a";"@b"` [download] is shorter than `join"","@a";join"","@b"` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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