Re^2: The perils of being tricky

You don't have warnings turned on, do you?

Not for the quick and dirty stuff. I use -w and strict at specific points in my development process, but usually I stick to techniques that I know to be clean.

It's probably just a personal thing, but I find that constantly using warnings is worse for me than checking my work at intervals. If I get a warning during continuous use, I just correct it and move on. My primary goal at that point is to make sure my latest piece of code produces the result that I want. When I use warnings at intervals, each warning pass is a specific test of the code's integrity. My only concern at that point is whether the code is clean, so I take the time to find ways to make sure my code stays clean in the future.

Mistakes like this one show me when I'm playing with things I shouldn't play with at all. If I need mechanical assitance to write a piece of code correctly, I probably won't be able to read it six weeks from now. And IMO, writing code that even I can't read without assistance is a problem. If I can't find a version that works, is clean, and is easy for me to remember, I write the technique off as being too tricky and look for other solutions.

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Re^3: The perils of being tricky by kaif (Friar) on Jun 04, 2005 at 19:24 UTC
However, the `+(..)` "trick" is very well-known and comes up very often (for me at least). It's documented in perlop and is worth knowing. Cool trick, though!	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: The perils of being tricky by mstone (Deacon) on Jun 04, 2005 at 19:32 UTC
However, the +(..) "trick" is very well-known ... No arguments there, and if you're used to it, by all means run with it. That just means it's part of your personal style. Me, I prefer not to think about syntax precendence if I can avoid it. That isn't a 'better' way of looking at things, it just means we have different regional dialects. ;-)	[reply]
Re^3: The perils of being tricky by gaal (Parson) on Jun 05, 2005 at 07:22 UTC
That's like saying you only write code you know to be bug-free :-) I know I make mistakes all the time. That's why I use as much unintrusive help as I can get. I'm not making an ideology of sloppiness, of course, but I don't chastise myself unduly for things that can't be helped. Oh, perl found a problem in my code? My bad; let's move on. (Of course I'm a better coder now than I used to be. I do learn from my mistakes; I just try not to spend overly much time on the learning itself. Also, warnings in this case and in many like it would have saved you from a real trap.)	[reply]