in reply to Re^3: How to create multipurpose lvalue sub such as CGI::param ?
in thread How to create multipurpose lvalue sub such as CGI::param ?

Lincoln's code is actually quite good.

Except for self_or_default() which is clever but not clear in terms of interface and that hand-rolled autoloading mess (private methods are in the code segment and public methods are in the data segment) which makes debugging nearly impossible for almost everything you want.

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Re^5: How to create multipurpose lvalue sub such as CGI::param ?
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Mar 24, 2008 at 17:39 UTC
    You know as well as I do that both those complaints (valid as they may be) were done for equally valid reasons. For the edification of the reader ...
    • self_or_default() was a design decision that, in hindsight, probably should've been done differently. Breaking backwards compatibility in the core module and providing a wrapper would probably have been a saner solution.
    • The hand-rolled autoloading mess is something you won't get Lincoln to apologize for. Until the advent of mod_perl and similar persistent interpreters, anything that could be done to speed up CGI.pm was considered a good thing.
    My criteria for good software:
    1. Does it work?
    2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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