Re: Or Operator

[Avitar]

my $page = $cgi->param("page") Or "login";

should prob be rewritten as a conditional statement for clairy...

my($page) = $cgi->param("page");
if($page eq ""){ $page = "login";}

Try it with a lowercase 'or'; Remember if it is worth writing, it is worth writing clear... if possible even difficult code should be understandable by even the most unexperianced.

[beable]

I think this is the clearest and most concise way to express it: my $page = $cgi->param("page") || "login"; You might say that inexperienced people won't understand it, but once they see it a few hundred times (because this is a very common way of doing it), they'll probably get it.

[wolv]

Then again, if there is a chance that $cgi->param("page") will be 0 - and you want to accept that, || will not work correctly. We'll get // (defined-or) in Perl 5.10, fortunately.

[Aristotle]

Except that will give you warnings if the page parameter is actually non-existent.

You want to test definedness as well as emptiness.

my $page = $cgi->param( "page" );
unless( defined $page and $page ne "" ){ $page = "login"; }

Of course that's pretty clusmy and contains lots of unnecessary punctuation. Let's use a statement modifier instead:

my $page = $cgi->param("page");
$page = "login" unless defined $page and $page ne "";