we shouldn't be hard on Matt, who as a teenager (IIRC) came up with something which has obviously filled a massive need

Actually, I disagree with this one very strongly. Matt was a teenager when he first wrote the scripts, but that was six years ago. In the meantime many people have pointed out the problems with his scripts and have offered to help him fix them. As far as I know he has made no attempt to rewrite the scripts using better practices. He occasionally patches security problems (whilst still not using -T) and in the middle of January last year he issued fixes for all of the Y2K bugs in the scripts.

Let's not forget that Matt has made a lot of money out of these scripts. As far as I'm concerned Matt has earned as much criticism as we can throw at him.

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<http://www.dave.org.uk>

Perl Training in the UK <http://www.iterative-software.com>