Re: One line accessor method style.

It's short, elegant, and gets the job done.

Sounds like typical Perl to me.

Will it confuse people

No doubt it will confuse people. It's almost impossible to write some code that doesn't confuse people. And there will always be people (and unfortunally, relatively more of them can be found on perlmonks) who try to enforce some arbitrary rules on how people should code because it otherwise confuses them (although they try to claim it confuses everyone else as well). Example where this happens:

bless {...}, ref($_[0]) || $_[0]
map in void context
using a double quoted string without interpolating something

is it just bad practice in general to rely on the order of evaluations?

Not at all. It's only bad practice to rely on the order of evaluation if the order isn't defined. But the order is defined in your case. From perlop:

Operator associativity defines what happens if a sequence of the same
operators is used one after another: whether the evaluator will evalu-
ate the left operations first or the right.  For example, in "8 - 4 -
2", subtraction is left associative so Perl evaluates the expression
left to right. "8 - 4" is evaluated first making the expression "4 - 2
== 2" and not "8 - 2 == 6".
[download]

And then, skipping a paragraph, it defines -> to be left associative.

Comment on Re: One line accessor method style. Select or Download Code

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Re^2: One line accessor method style. by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Feb 23, 2005 at 18:09 UTC
Urgh. Each one of those items have very good, if complex, reasons why they should be avoided. And, there are performance reasons, as well. Particularly with map in void context in Perl before 5.8. If you have a beef with someone in particular (merlyn, maybe?), have the courage of your convictions to stand up and make your thoughts attributable. Every single person in the top 100 Saints has disagreed with every other member of the top 100 Saints on numerous occasions. Yet, we all still seem to get along just fine ... Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing. Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid. Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence. Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.	[reply]
Re^2: One line accessor method style. by Anonymous Monk on Feb 23, 2005 at 22:33 UTC
Thanks for your reply. I disagree with you on all three of your examples, though. The first looks plain ugly, not elegant, and the second seems tailor-made for "for" or "foreach". The third seems like splitting hairs, but unless the string has interpolation or \' characters in it, why would you want to expend the additional effort to press the shift key?	[reply]