I never use die in CGI. I use a custom die_nice() routine which you will see dozens of references to if you do a Super Search for 'tachyon die_nice'. This is not a CGI, this is a demo snippet to illustrate a point so using die is perfectly appropriate. Your sarcasm is wasted.

Presenting OUT parameters to someone (obviously very inexperienced) with a "this is an OK way to do it" and not mentioning the problem I noted is sub optimal IMHO. You know that they will probably use the code verbatim.....

If you use OUT parameters much you will get caught passing constants to them. These bugs may not immediatly be obvious. You avoid this problem by not using them. I would be interested to see a good example of where they are a powerful and indespensible language feature given that you can easily pass references to and from subs.

If you are doing a code review which is easer to understand without looking at cleaner()

# for sub cleaner { my $var = shift; $var =~ s/foo/bar/; $var }
my $var = cleaner($var);
# then maybe lines later...
print $var
# or in a single line
print cleaner($var);

# or this if you have sub cleaner { $_[0] =~ s/foo/bar/ }
cleaner($var);
# then maybe lines later...
print $var;
# and you can't
print cleaner($var)
# unless you have sub cleaner { $_[0] =~ s/foo/bar; $_[0] }
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print