Re: Send e-mail using perl

[Jenda]

in reply to Send e-mail using perl

Considering the number of mail related modules on CPAN it surprises me that someone still attempts to shell out and use an external executable. Without testing whether the executable exists, whether it was started successfully, whether it reported any errors ...

Unrelated note: drop the &. It's not necessary in this case and means something else than people tend to think in other cases.

[flexvault]

Jenda,

Unrelated note: drop the &. It's not necessary in this case and means something else than people tend to think in other cases.

Could you explain this or give a reference. I see this comment a lot, and have never experienced any side-effect of using the '&'. I use the '&' to visually distinguish between in-script 'sub's and 'sub's that I have no control over via use/require/Begin.

When you haven't looked at code in 2-5 years and now need to modify it, small visual aids do help!

Thank you

[Anonymous Monk]

It's the old Perl4-style sub call syntax, and means "ignore prototype" and (if no arguments are passed), "make current @_ visible to subroutine" (perlsub)

Its use is discouraged but it doesn't seem to be harmful. Personally, I just view it as ugly and a hint that "this user learned Perl from tutorials written in 1995"

[flexvault]

AM,

And if the user started using Perl in 1996, then I would expect that to be true!

[Jenda]

The prototypes are fine, it's the "current @_" that I meant. There's a big and likely hard to debug difference between &foo(); and &foo;.