I'm not a real big fan of state variables, and in fact, for this example, I had tossed around doing some status checks similar to what you've done, but rejected it after a couple of false starts.

The problem with state variables is that they introduce some additional coupling:

• What if the variable gets set to a value other than the legal values (or not initialized)? You could branch more often or less often than you think.
• What if you refactor and now need a finer-grain distinction (stale vs real stale)? How do you track down which values to check, or does it now need some disjunctive tests?
• Tracing the program flow now also requires a data simulation as well.

Yeah, again, just reporting on where I've been burned. But I think I've got enough scars to not just be a guy in a diner on this one. You know, the guy at the end of the counter who has an opinion on everything even though he's not been there? {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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