In position after global matches? I saw

while (/TATA/g) { print "Matched 'TATA' at position ", pos, "\n"; }

and did a double-take. I thought, maybe mdunnbass made a typo. Then I went and looked at the docs, and indeed, learned a new function called pos. So, I counted all the functions. There are 216 listed.

Alright monks, I have been diddling with our favorite language for about 4 years (maye a bit more... joined the monastery 4 years ago). Have written a fair amount of Perl code. Nothing super complicated, but a lot of it quite useful. In all this time, I have used 64 functions that I can recall. Many of these 64 have been used only one or two times. I seem to do most of my work with if... else... split... join... for... while... and of recently, map. I really am not exaggerating. Besides these, and a handful more, and of course, the math/trig functions, I can't ever imagine using the remaining 150 or so functions.

What is going on? Am I walking the short and narrow? Am I closed minded? Have I not reached "level 9" yet? Do you monks, pedant or dilettante, use many more functions in your normal work? What about abnormal work?

Interestingly, http://tnx.nl/php#bloat lists PHP having more than 3000 functions. And here I am, thinking even 216 is more than I can use.

Enlighten me please.

--

when small people start casting long shadows, it is time to go to bed

In reply to functional functions by punkish

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