If you've been passing all your data around even if a given subroutine might not use it, I gotta agree with Jenda, this sounds poorly designed.

No, that's not what I've been doing. But I cannot imagine the mess I'd be in by trying to create a unique hash for every subroutine just to accommodate its particular requirements for incoming variables. I think I'd rather have a single hash with all of them than to have the nightmare of so many hashes that were hard to keep track of.

At the risk of making another 'disgusting' suggestion, if most of those 50 arguments is just state data being read or passed along to other subroutines, objects might be what you're after.

Objects must surely be the better way to handle this, but this is not possible for me: objects, pointers, references, etc. are beyond the sound barrier for me, cognitively, and I've never understood them even though I've tried quite hard. This may be why my code "smells." So be it. I can only do what I'm capable of grasping--which is why I've often been limited even by what modules I can use, because OOP modules without clear syntax examples of how to implement their functions are beyond me. (I can use, e.g. "$cgi->param('form_field');" because the documentation is clear enough for me to grasp this and because it is so simple; but many other similar constructions only result in errors when I try to use them, and I can never figure out why because I don't understand the abstractions in the first place.)

Being unable to use references/dereferences, etc. (like what is a "hashref"...I just don't get it), Raku's named parameters is a wonderful way of keeping things concrete without layers of so-called abstraction.

We've been trying to help and I'm not going to bully someone for being inexperienced but every complaint you have sounds like a symptom of poorly designed code [edit: and unjustified stubbornness] and I'm beginning to think we're just feeding a troll.

Most of my "stubbornness" may not be "justified," code-wise, but it is due to my limitations (more so than my inexperience), which are unrelated to the usual list of reasons one might consider the word "stubborn" to be appropriate. I simply cannot grasp logical or mathematical abstractions--something that has been a lifelong problem for me, and not just in programming. As for being a "troll," no, but it seems I am the resident punching bag of late, with XP reductions for virtually every post, er, "writeup." Count me as the resident object of catharsis.

Blessings,

~Polyglot~

In reply to Re^3: Ordering of parameters - Re^9: Converting Unicode by Polyglot
in thread Converting Unicode by BernieC

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