This is just a brain dump so many of the thoughts have not been completely thought through although it might be interesting for the everyone here.

In this node, An Anonymous Monk wants to know about how to analyze perl code for mantainability and usability. Take this idea but divorce it from its computer programming context. What is a computer program? It is text that instructs a computer to do things. As text, it is suceptable to textual analysis. The goal of this analysis has nothing to do with what you are instructing the computer to do but with what and how the author was thinking about their programming. This not only comes from looking closely at the variable and package names but also the overall structure of the program (i.e. OO vs. procedural, etc. etc.). For perl, this also includes trying to decern the reasons behind the use of different build-in and user defined functions. For other programming lanugages, this might be a bit harder since they are not as flexible as perl (I am thinking here of programming langauges also in the C/C++ family like java.)

I think this type of reflection upon a program could lead to some interesting insights on the thought processes that go into programming and the people who ultimately do the actual programming. In the near future, I may download some code to demonstrate how this could be done however this is a good point to start some discussion about this topic. Oh yes, I do understand that this is a tad bit of academic navel gazing.

In reply to Textual Analysis and Perl by cyocum

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