If a monk were to post a question about the hot new app he was developing on Bank of America's web team which started, say:

#!/usr/bin/perl
open(STDERR,'<&STDOUT');
require 'cgi-lib.pl';
print &PrintHeader;

if ( ! &ReadParse(*input) ) {
    print "Enter your name: <INPUT NAME=name>"
} else {
    print "Your name is ", $input{name} || "Slim Shady";
}

[download]

well, you know what the responses would be like. If you don't know, I encourage you to submit such a sample and enjoy a turn on Worst Nodes.

Seriously think about how you might be tempted to jump off on someone if they posted it. Got it pictured? The unedited version before you nice it up a little.

Now consider that the majority of the HTML that appears in replies/samples here is from the cgi-lib era. And consider how much easier it is to get HTML 4.01, or better, XHTML 1.0, right than weak references or inheritance or web security... And consider the counter arguments that might be given if they were given about perl code instead.

It works the way it is so why change it? If they didn't want me to use <hr> or <center>, they shouldn't let it work. But that's how I learned to do it!

(I know that posts often include things like <font> b/c we can't, and shouldn't be allowed to, inline style and that's not what this is about; sample code should be as close to the ideal as we can manage no matter what language it's in b/c people come here to learn and will imitate what they find. And I submit this not as a critique per se but more as a call to action.)

janitored by ybiC: s/node 9488/[Worst Nodes]/

In reply to Your kung fu is excellent but what about... by Your Mother

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.