actually with filtering you don't pay for it

Do you mean source filtering? I cannot, in all honesty, recommend this approach. It's fun to play with, but I consider that in general it's a glorious experiment that failed magnificently. I'd like to be proved wrong though, but I doubt big systems in production use filtering.

then with code like this foo() if $foo; why do you pay for a function call?

You don't, but I find that the added noise of the statement modifier is annoying. It's there to avoid paying the cost of the function call, but it extracts its own price on the overall readability of the program.

I also expressly declined to mention the -P switch. Are you aware of all the caveats that apply to its use? Check out perlrun. For me, having to jump through hoops to avoid $var =~ s/foo// would be a right hassle.

And yes, we're on the same wavelength: when I said "true macros", I meant true macros, not the toys that comes with a C compiler.

• another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl

In reply to Re^4: Debug Macro by grinder
in thread Debug Macro by Outaspace

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.