Re^2: Meaning of stat's 'rdev' value.

This is off topic sorta, but what's the point of

sub MAJOR_MASK   () { 03777400 }
sub MAJOR_SHIFT  () { 0000010 }
sub MINOR_MASK   () { 037774000377 }
sub MINOR_SHIFT  () { 0000000 }
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Those subs only return numbers, why not just put them into constants or even variables?

meh.

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Re^3: Meaning of stat's 'rdev' value. by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Sep 06, 2006 at 15:25 UTC
I can't speak for gellyfish. Once upon a time that was a popular way to do constants in Perl, though. The pragmas haven't always been around, and not changing an upper-cased variable just by convention often doesn't cut it. By making it returned from a sub, you can make it really constant without pragmas. Christopher E. Stith	[reply]
Re^3: Meaning of stat's 'rdev' value. by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Sep 06, 2006 at 15:37 UTC
In File::Stat::Bits these (and some other values) are defined in a separate .ph file that is generated at install time. As mr_mischief points out it is probably preferable to have these as constants so that they aren't changed from underneath you, but using constant in a separate file is going to add another layer of complexity, when all it does really is create a subroutine just like the above - the extra stuff is just to put the subroutines in the right package and make sure you don't overwrite some important symbols. /J\	[reply]