Re: This is why Perl is so frustrating

I would replace that rather clunky

if (($file ne ".") or ($file ne "..")) {
[download]

with the more elegant

unless ( $file eq "." || $file eq ".." ) {
[download]

because it reads more naturally. In fact, since parsing the file is the only thing that's happening inside the loop, I would just skip the file entirely with

next if ( $file eq "." || $file eq ".." );
[download]

There might be responses to my post for calls to make a regular expression out of this, but it's not really necessary.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

Comment on Re: This is why Perl is so frustrating Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: This is why Perl is so frustrating by wfsp (Abbot) on Jul 30, 2009 at 07:08 UTC
For me `unless ($expression){ # do something }` [download] is never elegant. I'll always plump for `if (not $expression){ # do something }` [download] especially if, as in this case `$expression` includes some boolean arithmetic. I do use it for early exits from loops though. I can read `while (<$fh>){ next unless /\S/; # }` [download] without too much trouble (as long as it's simple). As soon as an expression has a not an and and an or in it I'm almost sure to get it wrong and it often points to a poor algorithm which some refactoring can fix. Either that or put it into sub so I can say `if (work_to_do($args)){ # do some work }` [download] and test the living daylights out of it. Did I mention I've had awful trouble with boolean arithmetic? :-)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: This is why Perl is so frustrating by talexb (Chancellor) on Jul 30, 2009 at 13:58 UTC
We'll have to agree to diagree on this one. I find `if ( !$boolean1 and !$boolean2 ) {` [download] harder to read, and therefore more difficult to comprehend, than `unless ( $boolean1 or $boolean2 ) {` [download] I make this distinction because the original code was checking two conditions, not just one. I will agree that it's a saw-off when comparing `if ( !$boolean ) {` [download] and `unless ( $boolean ) {` [download] But for me, if I miss the tiny '!' character, then I have the logic backwards, which is a huge problem. I'm not going to miss the 'unless'. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply] [d/l] [select]