keeping things in tight blocks and subs makes problems harder to introduce and easier to find.

That, right there.

Sometimes, depending on the issue, Perl will inform you of a problem on a line that doesn't seem correct, because it can't accurately figure out exactly what line it really happened on. Parsing Perl is most definitely not a trivial task, and sometimes even the interpreter can't quite figure it out when dealing with syntax issues. Keeping your blocks/subs etc so they fit within a single screen (where feasible/possible) significantly aids in finding these issues.

Throw in a decent IDE or even editor (vi/vim was thrown around) can help with this process as they can highlight the specific issue.

As far as the OP's comment about "prime-time", that's asinine. Other programming languages throw the same way Perl does in this regard in certain situations, unable to identify the exact line number. Heck, I can even get C to do this, so I won't go any further into that FUD, as Your Mother aptly put it. I'll just chalk that up as being claimed out of pure frustration by OP.


In reply to Re^2: REALLY PERL ?? by stevieb
in thread REALLY PERL ?? by misterperl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.