Reduce a ton of noise by eliminating quotes in hash keys when they don't contain anything other than alphanum and underscore. This: $vars{'error'} becomes this: $vars{error}

The reasons I single quote hash keys are:

  1. it makes them obvious as literals because a text editor highlights them.
  2. it differentiates them from interpolated hash keys - e.g. $vars{"key_$count"};
  3. it is easier to expand into variable keys

I think of 3 in the same way I been told that: 

if ($condition) {
    $var = 1;
}

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is better than: 
$var = 1 if $condition;

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because we might want to add another statement into the code block.

Likewise, I feel: 

$vars{'example'} = 1;

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is better than: 
$vars{example} = 1;

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because we can expand it easily if necessary and create something like: 
$vars{'example' . $count} = 1;

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Others may have different opinions, clearly they do as there is a lot of code with unquoted hash keys, but this works for me in terms of clarity, expandability and maintainability. I don't see any downside to is on performance (please correct me if there is!) so I think I shall keep this one the way it is.

In reply to Quoted hask keys (was: Re^2: What to test in a new module) by Bod
in thread What to test in a new module by Bod

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