Cheap idioms

[Juerd]

There are some idioms that make life easier, because you'll have less to type. They're often used in one-liners and throw-away scripts. But there's one that I like more and more, every time I use it. I'm using it in production scripts now, and I'm starting to wonder if that's a good idea.

It's the cheap file slurp that uses the magical *ARGV and the fact that (@foo, $foo) = $bar will always set $foo to undef.

my $contents = do { local (@ARGV, $/) = $filename; <> };

Is this readable and maintainable enough, or do you think I should really stick to creating slurp routines?

sub slurp {
    my ($filename) = @_;
    local $/ = undef;
    open my $fh, $filename or die "$filename: $!";
    return <$fh>
}

I know File::Slurp exists, but don't like using modules for what can be done with a simple sub or regex. (Or maybe I would use a module if there was one module with a bunch of subs that I often use. Maybe I should release a Juerd.pm... hmmm :)

Do you think using the short slurping idiom in production code is a problem?

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.