I would add :-

Always check the results of all system calls (put lots of or die's in) - this will save you lots of heartache later!

Personally speaking, for hashes I tend to use references all the time because then your code looks the same everywhere (the place where you created the hash and the place where you passed a reference to it into a subrouting). YMMV of course!

In reply to RE: My philosophy on coding (in Perl and other languages): by ncw
in thread My philosophy on coding (in Perl and other languages): by mrmick

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