The problem in this case is not really about whether the program is re-runnable, but about the fact that it corrupts your data.
Neither of which is what the original recommendation is about. That recommendation, as it appears in "Perl Best Practices" is:
In-situ Arguments
Allow the same filename to be specified for both input and output.
And that most definitely is a best practice.
The issue raised here is that one of the two solutions suggested in the book is apparently more limited in applicability than I indicate in the text (a deficiency I have already mentioned that I'll be remedying as soon as I can).
Now it may well be that "Perl Best Practices" would benefit from the addition of an extra guideline; one that suggests using a transactional approach to avoid corrupting data. But that's only peripherally related to this guideline. It should definitely be a separate suggestion, since the problem of data corruption is not unique to opening the same file twice.
Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
Please read these before you post! —
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
- a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
Outside of code tags, you may need to use entities for some characters:
| |
For: |
|
Use: |
| & | | & |
| < | | < |
| > | | > |
| [ | | [ |
| ] | | ] |
Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.
|
|
