Re: When -w and use strict aren't enough...

The pain of writing code to support the pragma may well be more than the pain saved by the compile time checking.

Oh, I would agree with that. I personally would not use said pragmas. Then again, I don't even always use strict (though I do use it in include files and in large, complex programs, and I would certainly use it in a module). However, there are some people whose mindset just tends to prefer a lot of strict rules. People who prefer Pascal over BASIC, if you can imagine. People who use strict and warnings even for one-liners and obfuscations. Those people would probably appreciate the ability to force all subs to be predefined, for example. Of course, if they really want it, one of them would have to step forward and implement it, but what I was saying is that if it's done as a pragma, we needn't object, because all you have to do to be free of it is not bother to use the pragma.

That said, I'm not sure what the bondage pragma would do. Perhaps require all control structures to have a single entry and a single exit point (so, no next or last permitted, to say nothing of early returns), I suppose. I imagine the discipline pragma might prohibit subroutines from accessing any variables not lexically scoped within the subroutine, so that any external variables would have to be passed in as arguments to be used, and if they were to be changed the results would have to be passed back out as a return value and applied by the calling code. I'm not sure what use pain would do, exactly, but I suppose it would be even worse than discipline.

The really neat thing about these pragmas, if they existed, would be that we could say, "C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, but Perl gives you enough rope to tie yourself up."

$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/
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Re^2: When -w and use strict aren't enough... by Asim (Hermit) on Jun 16, 2006 at 13:07 UTC
However, there are some people whose mindset just tends to prefer a lot of strict rules. Ya! That's me! People who prefer Pascal over BASIC, if you can imagine. waves hands I even started in BASIC, back in, um, Middle School? But once I got to college, and Pascal and Scheme were the order of the day, I never looked back. I’m even trying to convince a co-worker to give up Visual Basic for C#, just so we can re-write, convert, and cleanup the vast stock of VB code in our environment. People who use strict and warnings even for one-liners and obfuscations. Well, maybe not that much. OTOH, I don't write obfuscations; it's enough of a struggle to me to write clear code. Those people would probably appreciate the ability to force all subs to be predefined, for example. Actually, no. I tend to think that would make the code less clear, not more. If I recall alright, it's mostly done in other languages due to compiler needs more than anything. I'd much rather have something where subs get "auto-rendered" into POD, so it's easier to write comments on subroutines (if you so wish); I think that would be much more useful, in terms of what someone reading your code would need, than any pre-declaration concept. ponders finding/writing such code..."Pod::Auto, anyone?" The really neat thing about these pragmas, if they existed, would be that we could say, "C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, but Perl gives you enough rope to tie yourself up." HEH. evil grin ----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.	[reply]

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Re^2: When -w and use strict aren't enough...
by Asim (Hermit) on Jun 16, 2006 at 13:07 UTC

However, there are some people whose mindset just tends to prefer a lot of strict rules.

Ya! That's me!

People who prefer Pascal over BASIC, if you can imagine.

*waves hands* I even started in BASIC, back in, um, Middle School? But once I got to college, and Pascal and Scheme were the order of the day, I never looked back. I’m even trying to convince a co-worker to give up Visual Basic for C#, just so we can re-write, convert, and cleanup the vast stock of VB code in our environment.

People who use strict and warnings even for one-liners and obfuscations.

Well, maybe not that much. OTOH, I don't write obfuscations; it's enough of a struggle to me to write clear code.

Those people would probably appreciate the ability to force all subs to be predefined, for example.

Actually, no. I tend to think that would make the code less clear, not more. If I recall alright, it's mostly done in other languages due to compiler needs more than anything. I'd much rather have something where subs get "auto-rendered" into POD, so it's easier to write comments on subroutines (if you so wish); I think that would be much more useful, in terms of what someone reading your code would need, than any pre-declaration concept.

*ponders finding/writing such code..."Pod::Auto, anyone?"*

The really neat thing about these pragmas, if they existed, would be that we could say, "C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, but Perl gives you enough rope to tie yourself up."

HEH. *evil grin*

----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.

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