I consider myself to be an o.k. Perl programmer. As in most things that I do, I long to be the best that I can. I recently posted a reply to a question "Single-machine IPC via sockets" and other things to say in the dark in which I gave example code for using Unix domain sockets.

merlyn replied with the following:
"Ahh, this uses the ugly %SIG-handler code that breaks servers sooner or later. There are better ways to reap kids. I have a few samples in my columns. Best look for examples that use a no-wait waitpid at strategic points in the top-level loop."

Excellent! I learned something today (as I do most days :^) ). The thing is, where does one find information like this. I'm not a computer scientist, I haven't studied algorithms, I don't know too much about the BigO theory, and I don't have a ton of programming experince (~ 1year). So, where do I find this stuff out ahead of time? I've got a couple programs with that "ugly %SIG-handler code" running currently, and I would've continued the same way had merlyn not said anything.

Is a book like Advanced Perl Programming the answer? Or is it really just a matter of experience, having things break or not work optimally, before I'll know and be able to spot these things ahead of time? I try to keep up with the newsgroups and this site, but apparently there's some things that I've missed. I'd love an all-inclusive answer, but 50 url's to web-sites would do :^).

In reply to Perl secrets by BastardOperator

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