I feel compelled to respond, considering Kurt's using one of my code snippets as an example.

I definitely agree that using modules for things like XML parsing, Database Access (DBI) and other commonly use, non-trivial functionality makes sense. These are usually complex tasks that would take some time to "reinvent" and the modules are well tested and maintained (usually). Yes, don't reinvent the wheel in those cases.

However, the example Kurt gives is that of finding the unique values in an array. This seems like a coding task that can be handled by the fundamentals of the language; and that is attested to if you look at the 2 lines in the 'uniq' subroutine in the actual List::MoreUtils module. Finding the unique elements in an array, from my experience with Perl, would be something I would never have thought about using a module to handle. Part of why I use Perl is that there are simple, easy ways to do things like finding the unique elements in an array.

And, no matter which way I code it, I can make it handle as many edge cases or local constraints that my program may have. I'm sure there are at least 1000 ways to skin a cat, and so there are ways to find unique elements in an array with Perl. If I need to do it more than once in the program I can just as easily put it into a subroutine of my own, with out the need to download List::MoreUtils at all.

But, for a sufficiently complex task, and one that is common to the particular domain I'm writing for (database access, xml parsing, web sites, etc.) I will almost definitely look to see if there is a module that exists that will make my life easier, streamline my code, shorten my development time, etc. But from my standpoint, finding the unique elements in an array is not one of those.

---
echo S 1 [ Y V U | perl -ane 'print reverse map { $_ = chr(ord($_)-1) } @F;'
Warning: Any code posted by tuxz0r is untested, unless otherwise stated, and is used at your own risk.

In reply to Re: Module Bloat and the Best Solution by tuxz0r
in thread Module Bloat and the Best Solution by KurtSchwind

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