I'm feeling a little contemplative today, mostly about very simple subjects. One topic that came to mind is this: What are the top ten things every Perl hacker should know? I encourage you all to offer your suggestions, but I've decided to provide a list of my own as a starting point.

  1. Perl is not an acronym
  2. there is more than one way to do it
  3. how and why to use warnings and use strict
  4. how and why to use taint checking
  5. how and why to use lexical scoping for variables
  6. how saved Perl source code files should be named
  7. how to use CPAN
  8. how and why to use perldoc and PerlMonks
  9. don't reinvent the wheel: how and why to use subroutines, modules, and libraries
  10. how and why to use regexen

I suspect the bit about naming Perl files will be considered less important by others here, but it seems quite important to me to know what file extensions to use for different types of source files, to use names without spaces and special characters in them, and to use at least vaguely descriptive names.

This is meant to be a list of generally important bits of knowledge, like quirks of the language, resources available, and important aspects of Perl culture. It's not intended to include things like ingenious snippets of code or what O'Reilly books about Perl are best (though these, too, are worthy subjects to contemplate).

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
 - apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

In reply to top ten things every Perl hacker should know by apotheon

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