(This has been cross-posted to my use.perl journal.)

The following code has a bug:

    sub _select_fields
    {
        my $self = shift;
        my @fields;

        if ($self->request->param('rev_type') eq 'both') {
            push @fields, ('rev', 'theater_avg');
        } elsif ($self->request->param('rev_type') eq 'total') {
            push @fields, 'rev';
        } else {
            push @fields, 'theater_avg';
        }

        push @fields, 'num_theaters', 'day_multiple';
        return @fields;
    }
[download]

It turns out that it's supposed to default to "both" instead of its current invisible "loc_avg" default. Further, a new feature has been requested: "day_multiple" should only show up if specifically requested. I certainly didn't want to add to this nasty if/else chain, so I made it a hash. Now it's nice and easy to read.

    sub _select_fields
    {
        my $self = shift;
        my %rev_types = (
            both    => [ qw/rev  theater_avg  num_theaters/ ],
            total   => [ qw/rev               num_theaters/ ],
            loc_avg => [ qw/     theater_avg  num_theaters/ ],
            all     => [ qw/rev  theater_avg  num_theaters  day_multip
+le/ ],
        );

        my $rev_type = $self->request->param('rev_type');
        $rev_type    = 'both' unless exists $rev_types{$rev_type};
        return @{$rev_types{$rev_type}};
    }
[download]

A boolean "if" isn't such a bad thing (that's the unless in the above code.) It's the nasty if/elsif/else chains that keep cropping up that are problematic. Also note that we've added functionality but the code is shorter and easier to read. This actually happens quite frequently if we look at our "if" statements and figure out how to excise them.

Remember kids: friends don't left friends use "if."

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