Re^2: A use strict confession, with real questions.

If you can do that, at least you convert the system to be strict-safe one component at a time.

yes, this... I think I've got it.

How much of this "well built system" has regression tests around it?

Never been that route, but probably About 20 million dollar wise in transactions to date; hundreds of thousands of transactions.

What's a regression test? I don't do corporate perl, I just do perl.

write a comprehensive regression test suite
Ok I was looking for some real world stuff to deal with this but I think I got what I needed based on your 'one component at a time' comment. Thanks much for your input. :-)

Comment on Re^2: A use strict confession, with real questions.

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Re^3: A use strict confession, with real questions. by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Jun 05, 2015 at 06:54 UTC
What's a regression test? Currently, how do you test your software? Is it ad-hoc manual testing? Or do you have formal manual test plans you run through? Or do you use automated testing? As you change your code to use strict, there is a risk that you may accidentally break a working system. If you have an automated regression test suite in place, you can: Run the automated test suite. It passes. Good. Make your code changes to make the code strict-safe. Re-run the automated test suite. If it now fails, you know that your code change broke the system. Of course, if your automated regression test suite is mickey-mouse, passing all the tests doesn't mean much. But if you have a comprehensive test suite in place it gives you much greater confidence that you haven't accidentally broken the system while cleaning up the code. BTW, note that Perl itself has a comprehensive automated regression test suite (run with "make test" when you build Perl). This test suite is an invaluable safety net to Perl developers as they change the (fragile) perl C source code.	[reply]
Re^3: A use strict confession, with real questions. by erix (Prior) on Jun 05, 2015 at 05:28 UTC
What's a regression test? See regression test.	[reply]
Re^3: A use strict confession, with real questions. by flexvault (Monsignor) on Jun 05, 2015 at 15:43 UTC
Welcome perlidiot123, Try using <ul><i> and </i></ul> around comments from a previous post like this: If you can do that, at least you convert the system to be strict-safe one component at a time. yes, this... I think I've got it. ( your comment ) IMHO, It helps the readers understand your responses. About your real question, I think its a slow process of fixing existing scripts one at a time. About 8 years ago I had the same situation. I starting using strictures, but only if I needed to update an existing process. Many of the old are running in production without re-write, but if I add something new or need to update a process, you can be sure I use strictures plus better Perl techniques. Every time you look at older code, you can see a better way. Good Luck! Regards...Ed "Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin	[reply]