In the case of Switch.pm, anything other than parsing code exactly the way perl does is unaccaptable, because anything less will cause bugs, often in areas which are unrelated to the use of a switch.
That's like saying you can't make typos when editing, because
they cause bugs. And you are implying those bugs can't be found before they product is released. If Switch.pm parses
something incorrectly, it's very likely to produce uncompilable code. Perhaps you deliver code without even attempting to compile, I sure don't. In the few cases it
doesn't produce uncompilable code, it'll produce code that
is wrong - and your test suite is going to catch it. (If it
doesn't produce code that's wrong, the code is correct,
so it's not a problem). If you don't want to trust your test
suite, you can always visually inspect the results of the
source filter, to check whether it substituted only the
code you wanted to be substituted, and all of it.
The essence is that you write a particular program, and apply a filter to it. And that program isn't going to
change from run to run. It's fixed. It's not input.
Switch.pm might not parse Perl correctly, but that's ok
because you can catch the abnormalities in time.
Abigail
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You're just creating more work for yourself by using Switch.pm. If it screws up the parsing, you now have to change code (which may be completely unrelated to the code that actually uses a switch statement) just to work around bugs in Switch.pm. That's a lot more work for something that is little more than syntax sugar and is easily replaced with a multitude of common Perl idioms. Even if you make all the workarounds in the current version of Switch.pm, new versions may introduce brand new bugs for you to work around.
The correct solution is to avoid Switch.pm in the first place for serious code.
----
: () { :|:& };:
Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated
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[d/l] |
If it screws up the parsing, you now have to change code (which may be completely unrelated to the code that actually uses a switch statement) just to work around bugs in Switch.pm.
You sound as if that's a common case. How often do you write
code that contains something that looks like a 'switch', but
isn't?
That's a lot more work for something that is little more than syntax sugar and is easily replaced with a multitude of common Perl idioms.
The same could be said about IO::Socket or CGI. Or about almost any module out there.
And any module may contain bugs you will have to code
around. There hasn't been a perl released that doesn't
contain bugs someone has to code around.
Abigail
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