Re^2: Uninitialized filehandles not as advertised?!

... Why do you need a sub at all?

This code is part of an abstraction layer. Multiple programs will call this routine, which during the prototyping phase will just scan a flat file, but in future may use DBM or SQLite. As with abstraction layers in general, we won't want at that point to go back and change all of the open() calls to deal with database setup and take down.

Returning undef would be better than returning an empty string.

Answer 1

I am lazy and prefer to use the simpler test with || instead of having to get my return value, separately test it for defined(), and only then start using it.

Answer 2

TMTOWTDI and I like it that way.

Comment on Re^2: Uninitialized filehandles not as advertised?!

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Re^3: Uninitialized filehandles not as advertised?! by ikegami (Patriarch) on May 27, 2008 at 09:10 UTC
Either `\|\|` works for both undef and the empty string, or it works for neither. In this case, it works for both. TMTOWTDI means you have the freedom to choose the best way in a given situation. It doesn't mean it's a good idea to arbitrarily pick a way of doing something, contrary to the meaning you gave it. Returning undef results in a much better failure mode (gives an error with a meaningful message instead of a misleading warning) if the user forgets to do error checking, so returning undef is better than returning an empty string in this situation.	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^3: Uninitialized filehandles not as advertised?!
by ikegami (Patriarch) on May 27, 2008 at 09:10 UTC

Either || works for both undef and the empty string, or it works for neither. In this case, it works for both.

TMTOWTDI means you have the freedom to choose the best way in a given situation. It doesn't mean it's a good idea to arbitrarily pick a way of doing something, contrary to the meaning you gave it. Returning undef results in a much better failure mode (gives an error with a meaningful message instead of a misleading warning) if the user forgets to do error checking, so returning undef is better than returning an empty string in this situation.

[reply]
[d/l]