Another idea might be to just write 2 versions of the code. Although I wouldn't bother if someone has already given a perfectly reasonable basic answer. And personally I kind of like seeing golf answers without explanation. Gives me something to do when I get bored ;-) And if I get stumped I can always ask.

One of the things I liked about Effective Perl Programming was the lack of indepth discussion on each line of code. Something I always skip over in books. I just read the code and then jump to the next paragraph. I always got the impression that if the book was thick, it was either a reference or it was too wordy.

Oh, and personally, RTFM is only rude if no link is given. Probably the most important part of learning something new is figuring out how the FM is layed out.

just me 2 pennies