Dwellers of the Monastery, allow me to de-lurk, partly from a desire to commune with fellow Monks, partly from a regular frustration in on-line discussions.

Sometimes, one must run Perl scripts on machines that one does not own, has no administrative rights on, and most significantly, one is not allowed to install any software on. In general, one is lucky if /usr/bin/perl -v returns something containing a 5. A prime example is an inventory script. One copies it to one's home directory, one runs it, and one removes it. One might be grateful that even this is allowed.

Not all of these restrictions are even unreasonable. One does not want to upgrade a seemingly innocuous package, only to find that this upgrade breaks something important. One wishes to tread lightly, at least this one does.

For this reason, I have on occasion been forced to write modules for which a beautiful module already exists on CPAN. I have had to produce my very own XML parser, because XML::LibXML was not installed everywhere, and I was forbidden from installing it, or anything else. People pointing out how wonderful XML::LibXML is, and that I am stupidly re-inventing a perfectly good wheel, only succeed in rubbing salt into the wound and bring me no closer to a solution.

Does this resonate with anyone in this group? If so, is there a concise term for this kind of situation? For instance:

• Hi, I'd like to know how to fork off several subprocesses in a controlled manner, but fork() isn't returning what I expect it to.
• There's a great module for that on CPAN! Why don't you use that? It'll save you so much hassle!
• I know. Can't. I'm in a nature reserve. Take nothing but logs, leave nothing but wtmp entries.

Or something in that spirit.

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