You could execute it and find out.

Assume that the program produces no messages whatsoever. You run it without parameters, it says nothing. You pass a file as parameter, it says nothing. You list the directory, there's no new file, the one passed hasn't changed. Hmm, that probably wasn't it.

Or suppose you have a library with absolutely no documentation.

Tell me how you would go about finding out what the code does at this point.

Of course the fact that code is executable by a computer is not quite incidental, but the essence of that saying is that you should write your code as if it were. In fact, you are already thinking by these lines, even if you don't realize it.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re^2: Computers declared extraneous by Aristotle
in thread Cheap idioms by Juerd

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.