In a language as dynamic as Perl, we cannot have a lot of compile-time checks, and I am always happy when it happens, as in this case. I commend the compiler for complaining!

Obviously, it doesn't make much sense to chomp a constant, but if your operating within a sub, you don't know what the user will pass you.

I do not quite understand this. Inside of a sub, when the user passes in some data, it would not be a constant, would it?

If the user passes a constant that doesn't need chomping it would be nice to allow that thtough without having to duplicate the tests inherent in chomp?

What exactly do you mean by constant? I take it to be something that is known at compile-time.

I think it would be nice if the compiler optimized away the chomp completely if called with a compile-time constant. But I am not sure this is a feature many people need.

Update: After reading [id://BigLug]'s response and his excellent examples, I now understand what you meant by "inside of a sub". In this case, I tend to agree with you, that the run-time error that occurs when you pass in a read-only 'fred' (which does not need to be modified) is a little harsh. On the other hand, the subroutine modify wants to modify its parameter and passing constants to it would be as illegal as passing them directly to chomp.

In reply to Re: chomping constants by Thilosophy
in thread Should chomping a constant always raise an error? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.