Perl is full of implicite things. It's one of the things that makes Perl, Perl.

Yes, but implicitness isn't always a good thing:

time / sin;

...

$attributes = /^\w+: .*$/gm;

...

sin  / 25 ; # / ; does this work?;
time / 30 ; # / ; does this?;

[download]

It's that same power to leave certain things unsaid that also enables stuff like this.

Oh, goodie. A convention that hardly anyone uses, and which requires you to inspect the source code instead of checking the documentation.

Wanting people to be able to deduct something just from looking at one line of code does not preclude one from documenting said line of code. Did I say you shouldn't document your code, or that calculated use of return statements is a suitable substitute for POD? No? Then why are you suggesting I said that?

Why is it OK to use implicite arguments for shift?

Because it isn't ambiguous. shift with no arguments inside of a subroutine shifts @_. Although honestly, there are times I'm not crazy about @_ either, but that's all I've got.

In reply to Re^11: "advanced" Perl functions and maintainability by William G. Davis
in thread "advanced" Perl functions and maintainability by geektron

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