Legibility.

When does a piece of code become illegible? At what point do we declare it to cross the boundary into obfuscation?

There are many who would declare that a it begins with something as simple as writing 

print "$_\n" for @array;  # output each element in array on a separate
+ line

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in place of 
for $element (@array) {
  print "$element\n";
}

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or even 
$result = $object->method($arg1,$arg2) unless $something_else;

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for 
if(not $something_else) {
  $result = $object->method($arg1,$arg2);
}

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Perly English has its quirks, and most people are familiar with Merlyn's Sorting Mantra : map sort map; yet to many, nonblockified pieces of code draw some serious FUD factor. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) Could it be a self-documenting code issue? Could it be that snippets, such as the above, use facets of perl fewer people understand?

How does the paradigm of Perlesque take root? What have you seen in your coding travels?

-v
"Perl. There is no substitute."

In reply to Legible or Obfuscated? by Velaki

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