Now, tell me... is that not a *lot* easier to comprehend... and more importantly, if you were a maintenance coder... would you not prefer to have to understand these 2 lines of code, rather than the chunk of java?

If I were a Perl maintenance coder, I might prefer something slightly more verbose (but only slightly).

But if I were using this example to wave at Java coders to convince them that Perl will save them grief, I would make it even more verbose, lest it reenforce a notion that Perl is overly cryptic. Past a point, "Look how small we can do this with Perl!" becomes a negative. Instead, present Java programmers with something more familiar.

Something like 

  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
  use strict;

  my %frequency = ();    # maps token -> count

  # for every line of every input file
  while ( <> ) {
      # for each token on the line
      foreach my $token ( split /\W/ ) {
          # increment the count for the token
          $frequency{$token}++;
      }
  }

  # print each token and its count
  foreach my $token ( sort keys %frequency ) {
      print "$token: $frequency{$token}\n";
  }

[download]
A bit more verbose than what would automatically fly off the fingertips of a seasoned Perl hacker, but even with comments, it is less than a third the size of the Java example. AND it only uses control structures that a Java programmer should recognize. The only thing they might object to is the hidden use of $_.

(I don't know how TreeMap behaves, so the sort might need to be changed to sort on value.)

In reply to Re: Efficiency in maintenance coding... by dws
in thread Efficiency in maintenance coding... by eduardo

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.