Well, you were the one claiming they shouldn't use m// because that's more work for perl than using index, posting a benchmark to back up your claim.

No, I didn't. You're putting words in my mouth. I claimed that many Perl hackers use m// exclusively, regardless of efficiency, then I posted bechmarks showing that, for constant substrings, index/rindex are usually faster.

I posted a benchmark using different data which shows index losing. index *isn't* always faster, so Perl hackers aren't "wrong" or even inefficient for using m// over index.

I never claimed it was "always" faster or that people were wrong to use m//. diotalevi tried to use efficiency as a reason to choose map instead of foreach, and I pointed out that most Perl hackers use m// regardless of its efficiency. Some never touch index/rindex. The fact is that efficiency is the last thing on their mind when they make their choice. map and m// generally take less typing, and, I guess, are much cooler, and that's the reason why so many Perl hackers live and die by them.

Yes I did. If you think I'm wrong, please point out an unquated meta character in one of the pattern strings. If there were unquoted meta characters in the pattern strings, the benchmark wouldn't be fair, would it? index doesn't know metacharacters.

If the scalar containing the substring to search for comes from some extenral source (e.g., supplied to your function as an argument), then you'd have to quote metacharacters in it anyway, which is usaully the only reason why I'd put a scalar inside of a pattern to begin with. Although I guess for this example you could just do away with the scalar altogether and put its contents directly in the pattern.

In reply to Re^9: "advanced" Perl functions and maintainability by William G. Davis
in thread "advanced" Perl functions and maintainability by geektron

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