Being a former logic programming daemon, let's take a completely different take on writing this. Among other things, this different take shows that you should use constants instead of strings to avoid spelling errors. 
  ## main loop
  if (cache_is_good()) {                 
    show_cache_and_exit("current");
  }

# INSTEAD BECOMES

   cache(GOOD) && show_cache && exit('current');

[download]

  if (cache_is_stale()) {
    if (i_am_the_writer()) {
      if (i_can_fork()) {
        if (i_am_the_parent()) {
          show_cache_and_exit("stale");
        }
        ## child does:
        be_a_child();
        update_cache();
        exit 0;
      }
      ## cannot fork, so it's up to me
      update_cache();
      show_cache_and_exit("current");
    }
    ## I'm not the writer, so show old cache
    show_cache_and_exit("stale");
  }

#### BECOMES
(cache(BAD) && sleep(5) && redo)
             ||
(cache(STALE) && 
  (!i_am_writer && show_cache && exit(STALE))
             ||
  (
  i_am_writer && 
  (forkable() && (
   (parent && show_cache && exit(STALE))
      ||
   (child  && update_cache && exit(0)
   )) 
   || (update_cache && exit(CURRENT)
  )

[download]
Prince "--'s here I come! Where is the preview button for comments? Why is this TEXTAREA so small? I cant see anything?" PAWN

In reply to RE: On elegant coding... by princepawn
in thread Just thinking ... by toadi

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.