To further emphasize this point, there are a number of edge-cases that most programmers will never encounter, even in such a "simple" problem as unique-ing a list. For example, undef and "" will both be treated the same way, which may not be appropriate. Two-faced scalars may not be handled correctly. Objects and references will certainly not be handled correctly. A library, on the other hand, can solve this problem without you even needing to know that the edge-cases existed. That is the big win.

(Note: This isn't to say that the library always does it right. The version of uniq() in List::MoreUtils doesn't handle two-faced scalars correctly, but it does handle objects and references correctly, as expected.)

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re^2: Module Bloat and the Best Solution by dragonchild
in thread Module Bloat and the Best Solution by KurtSchwind

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