I think there are two parts to this, the first is the use of modifiers - basically, what it preferable; an "if COND" or and "unless NOT COND". The unless has an implicit not - since you want to perform the statement if the third paramater was provided.

My personal view is the "if @ >=3" if preferable to the "unless" option. We are wanting to do something if there are still some paramaters to process - so write it that way. Whether the ">2" or ">=3" is better, well, that to me is personal choice. However, the ">2" option is the minimalist solution - we don't care how many paramaters there are, as long as there is at least one more.

The second issue is the one Merlyn raised - what is the most desirable to make processing decisions on subroutine paramaters? Merlyn's way - doing a shift on @_ and processing each paramater in turn is probably the safest way. Each paramater has its processing "self containted" - that is, you are not relying on its position in the @_ array, or the total number of arguments, or other potential time bombs.


In reply to Re: Very very small style question by Maclir
in thread Very very small style question by Dominus

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.