Re^3: Common Perl Pitfalls

It always amazes me people prefer downloading a CPAN module, and using it, over writing a one-liner. I'm even more amazed that people think that just because there's a module on CPAN, it automatically is fully debugged and covers all the edge cases.

I do wonder though, if it takes half a day to write:

my $slurp = do {local $/; <HANDLE>};
[download]

how long do you need to type in:

use Some::Module::From::CPAN;
my $slurp = Some::Module::From::CPAN->some_API(some_argument);
[download]

Twice the number of lines, so, a full work day?

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Re^4: Common Perl Pitfalls by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 11, 2012 at 15:15 UTC
`use File::Slurp; my $text = read_file( 'filename' );` [download] Yeah, that's a whole day's work. I submit that finding the documentation on such a method is substantially easier than finding the documentation (for lack of a better word) for the snippet you gave. Note. The "cost" of useing the module is amortized over all the calls you make to any of its methods (of which File::Slurp has several useful ones). And the cost of downloading a module is amortized over all of the times you ever use it (at least on that machine).	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: Common Perl Pitfalls by JavaFan (Canon) on Apr 11, 2012 at 15:29 UTC
Yeah, that's a whole day's work. Maybe not for you or me. But for someone who needs half a day to type `my $test = do {local $/; <HANDLE>};` [download] it could easily be.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^6: Common Perl Pitfalls by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 11, 2012 at 16:14 UTC
half a day to type You keep dwelling on that, but I think you're misdirecting. He wrote, "spend half a day writing and debugging code", not "half a day to type in one line". If someone has a bug they need to track down, they're far more likely to waste cycles on a line like `$_=do{local$/;<>};` than one like `$_=read_file($file);` Now let's compare apples to apples: `use File::Slurp; my $text = read_file( 'filename' );` [download] vs `my $text = do { local $/; open my $fh, '<', 'filename' or die "Error opening filename for read - $!"; <$fh> };` [download] For most programmers, the former looks sane.	[reply] [d/l] [select]