The point, such as it is, is that in order to cover all three possible evaluations of the conditional, you have to make that meaningless call. This, of course, sucks. Now, probably the answer is that 100% code coverage isn't always possible or desirable.

On the other hand, I've seen large (hundreds of classes) systems where every constructor included ref $class || $class, and nowhere was any of them ever called using an existing instance. So, that's just silly.

If you never use the constructor in this way, you might as well just drop it. As a minor side-effect, you get your code coverage a little higher, and maybe that makes your manager happy or something.

In reply to Re^2: Is "ref($class) || $class" a bad thing? by kscaldef
in thread Is "ref($class) || $class" a bad thing? by stvn

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.