use Perl

• Scope bashing? (Score:1)

  by oylenshpeegul (9338)

  Calling my comment on SO "scope bashing" is unfair. I'm all in favor of scoping everything as tightly as possible. Indeed, I agree with everything in chromatic's post. But I still think the practice of wrapping a Perl script in a main subroutine is not "best" or even good. I maintain it's an antipattern that indicates the author is a C programmer, not a Perl programmer. In chromatic's example, $sth has tighter scope than the other variables, but in the first case, it's declared along with the rest. Wrappin
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by potyl (8582)

    You're right that I haven't chosen my words properly. I should have said scope discussion.

    Please accept my apologies.
• global bad, lexical good (Score:1)

  by n1vux (1492)

  This certainly is covered in Damian Conway's PBP [safaribooksonline.com]:

  "5.1. Lexical Variables
  Avoid using non-lexical variables."

  And preferred use of my (or local for certain built-ins) is repeated in a dozen or more specific contexts like filehandeles, builtin vars, ....

  --
  Bill
  # I had a sig when sigs were cool
  use Sig;
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by potyl (8582)

    This certainly is covered in Damian Conway's PBP: "5.1. Lexical Variables Avoid using non-lexical variables."

    I'm not referring to lexical variables (my), as you pointed out that part is covered by the best practices. I was referring to writing a single script from the top to the bottom with out localizing all variables. Remember that my only declares the variable for the life time of the current block. If the variable is not declared in a block then the file is the block scope, making the variable global.
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Hercynium (8027)

      hear hear!

      Whenever I encounter a substantial (>100 lines) perl script with no main sub I get nervous.

      A quick, one-off script may not require the extra structure and discipline, but we all know how easily a one-off can become mission-critical... and quickly grow in size scope and function.

      In my opinion, file-scoped vars are nearly as bad as true globals, and packaged-scoped vars less-so, but still best to avoid, unless the alternative is sufficiently more complicated code somewhere else.

      By using a main bl