Well, I'd agree with you, if that helps. :)

The person who wrote this code did something pretty silly by using symbolic references. I don't understand why people write things like this (well, okay, so I do: partly, because they come from other languages where it's encouraged or looked upon as the norm). But why do this when you could use a hash and make it *so* much easier for yourself?

Because as silly as that was to use symbolic refs initially, it's even sillier to *defend* them. It's *not* normal. It may be used often, but it's not used by people who know of a better way.

For what it's worth, here's some more ammunition against using symbolic refs: http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/varvarname2.html.

In the end, it's not your code--and if their system is going to break because of their broken programming techniques... hopefully that won't be your problem. :)

In reply to Re: Putting HTML fieldnames in symbol space by btrott
in thread Putting HTML fieldnames in symbol space by Russ

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.