As one of those pedestal-ian monks, I'll try and explain it.

The issue is that every single Perl style guide I've ever seen has been a C or C++ style guide with funny characters thrown in. For example, using extra parentheses in C makes sense. The cases where the parens aren't needed or wanted are few and far between. However, adding parens to Perl everywhere you can makes it look like Lisp with a bad case of acne. (This is in the style guide for where I'm currently working. This is also the style guide everyone is ignoring.)

Most companies either don't know they're running Perl, think Perl isn't worth the time, are actively trying to phase out all open-source-dependent projects, or consider Perl to be a bastardized version of C. This is even more prevalent in Perl-based dot-coms. (The style guide in that place was even worse than where I am right now with all the idiotic parentheses!)

What I'm getting at is that standards are anything but, common sense isn't, and the rest of us are extremely wary of such a thing. This isn't to say that you shouldn't do it. In fact, if it works for you, I would love to help work on such a project! (It sounds neat-o keen. But, don't expect me to work within standards I didn't agree to... *grins*)

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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.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.