Or am I overseeing some "important" side effect?

Probably a warnings freak like me :) If the the value of $outhash{$str} is undefined, you'll get a warning about using an undefined value. update - you won't but I bet your colleague assumed the same thing that I did :)

My guess is that the keys aren't known until the script is run, and that's your colleague's way of getting rid of the warnings. A perfectly valid way too. They are making you explicitly aware of the fact that $outhash{$str} may be undefined when you try to increment it.

This would work equally well:

$outhash{$str}||=0;
$outhash{$str}++;

[download]

.02

cLive ;-)

In reply to Re: Refactoring: dumb or witty use of ternary operator? by cLive ;-)
in thread Refactoring: dumb or witty use of ternary operator? by PetaMem

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