Perl Best Practices suggests that subroutines with more than three params should use named parameters rather than ordered params. It eases the assertion a little by suggesting that the threshold is a general rule of thumb, and may be different in different environments. The examples of named parameters given in PBP are all plain-old-alphabetical key names.

By contrast, some OO frameworks that use named parameters start off the parameter names with a hyphen. I've seen some CPAN modules that do the same.

The fat comma (=>) only works its quotish magic on keys that (1) Start with a letter or underscore, and (2) contain only alphanumeric or underscore characters.

My question is: Why is a hyphen often used as the first character in named parameters? And do the 'good reasons' (if any exist) outweigh the inconvenience of defeating part of the usefulness of the fat comma operator? I realize that second question is probably difficult to answer definitively, but I'm curious about the rationale.


Dave

In reply to How should named paramater keys be named? by davido

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