What DID the dog have in its mouth?

VSarkiss has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

OK, so this is somewhat sub-serious, but it is about Perl (the source, anyway) and I am looking for wisdom.

In the Perl source (now in mg.c, but previously in stab.c) is this comment from Larry:

      /* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
      /*   in its mouth... */
[download]

The only reference I can find that seems related (courtesy of the all-seeing Oracle) is to an urban legend about a dog bringing home a dead rabbit.

Is that it? I can kind of see the connection: it's in a section of code that's taint-checking the PATH from the environment so you don't get any nasty surprises.

Anyone know for sure?

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Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Sep 10, 2003 at 21:07 UTC
I asked Larry about this once. Spoilers follow. A brick. (That probably doesn't help, but track me down at a conference sometime and I'll explain it.)	[reply]
Re: Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by naChoZ (Curate) on Sep 10, 2003 at 23:41 UTC
Is this (followed by this) the joke? -- "I just read perlman:perlboot," said Tom, objectively. naChoZ	[reply]
Re: Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by converter (Priest) on Sep 10, 2003 at 22:57 UTC
Now that's one tough dog. I wonder if he ate the whole thing. converter	[reply]
Re: Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by Helter (Chaplain) on Sep 11, 2003 at 12:43 UTC
So now I'm very intrigued, can't you post the explanation? If it is not appropriate for this forum for some reason can I message you an e-mail address :) Thanks!	[reply]
3Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by bart (Canon) on Sep 11, 2003 at 13:33 UTC
I'm just guessing... Looking at that daily digest of the jokes mailing list, I gather this is what one could call a running joke. It starts in one story... and ends in another, at first sight totally unrelated story, that got posted 4 hours later. So the conclusion of the second story unexpectedly links the two stories... and I think this is what the comment alluded to: the fact that in this piece of code you suddenly get an unexpected connection to another seemingly totally unrelated piece of code. I'm still not sure what the connection may be, being unfamiliar with that part of perl's source code, but I'd be thinking in the direction of use of the same global variable in the two places, or something along the same lines. I'm not even sure these two stories are indeed what the comment is referring to.	[reply]
Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by sauoq (Abbot) on Sep 10, 2003 at 21:07 UTC
The first thing that came to my mind is 'homework'. In the U.S., at least, "The dog ate my homework" is a cliche excuse for school children... I'm not sure what the relevance or connection is though, or even if that was the intended association. -sauoq "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";	[reply]
Re: What DID the dog have in its mouth? by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Sep 10, 2003 at 22:45 UTC
A brick, right? `($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss') =~y~b-v~a-z~s; print` [download]	[reply] [d/l]