This is rather frustrating. I put a lot of energy into
becoming a competent Perl programmer, I tell you a lot of
valuable information point blank, and you just ignore it
all?
Sure, you have lots of croak calls. But if your code is
like any half-way sane person's, none of them are expected
to be called in regular use. Now based on what happened
when you did call it, I am willing to bet that your
installation is messed up.
I am telling you that based on quite a bit of experience.
Please do not disregard that statement. If it is true, then
all of your error handling is going to be giving you back
useless error messages. If you are a good programmer, that
statement should bother you. A lot.
Furthermore compare the error with what your code tries to
put out. Your error reporting doesn't actually give the
error it is supposed to. That is worrisome. However even
if your code worked as you expect, the error message that
you would have gotten would be wrong and misleading. That
underscores my point that I made before about error
handling, which you seem to be ignoring. But a good
programmer wouldn't ignore that. A good programmer should
be bothered if error handling gives you messages that send
you down a blind alley. A good programmer doesn't
want to make debugging harder.
So I am telling you the following.
- I think you are dismissing my belief that your
installation has problems far too easily.
- The fact that there is no connection between what the
error was and what the message is that you got should be
a giant red flag that should worry you.
- Your error handling is broken and needs fixing. Even
if you got the message that you had worked to put there,
the result would have just left you confused again. If you
take the suggestions that I gave you earlier, this would
not happen again.
- Your motto is, typos and all, "Wierd things happen,
get used to it". Well that attitude is extremely
dangerous in a programer. Yes, weird stuff happens. But
you shouldn't just learn to live with it. Instead you
should be bothered by it, investigate it, and make it so it
doesn't happen any more.
Well if I wasn't sick as a dog, I probably would rewrite
this to come off in a kinder way. But I am, and I think
that what I am saying has value. So please ignore the tone
if you need to and focus on the message... | [reply] |
Ahh, I'm afraid I mislead you
I had actually taken into account what you had said, and changed the error message, however I did not feel that it warrented mentioning again. I suppose it did, but I was half asleep at the time.
As to whether or not croak worked... I have been using it in many other programs over the past several months. And it was actually called with other errors in the program previously (I had already fixed those problems...)
As to my motto. I don't just dismiss unusual things, I prefer to investigate them. (Hence the fact that I posted the confusing error message) However that doesn't mean you shouldn't get used to unusual things happening. Also, thanks for pointing out the misspelling. Heh, I never really paid attention to my own sig.
The tone of the message was understandable, and I have no complaints.
I thank you for your input.
"Weird things happen, get used to it"
Flame ~ Lead Programmer: GMS
http://gms.uoe.org
| [reply] |