I think it falls on the programmer's shoulders to make sure her code does not expect that the function isn't going to mangle $_. There are just too many places that $_ could get screwed up.

Besides, I like to explicitly define what the item is that I'm dealing with. I find it much more sane to say, for example:

for my $isbn ( @isbns ) {
    dosomething($isbn);
[download]

than just implicitly saying

for ( @isbns ) {
    dosomething($_);
[download]

Besides, in the latter case, you have to ask yourself a question: "Where is the $_ coming from, and what is it?" It should be every programmer's job to eliminate any such potential questions from the minds of future maintainers, even if it's herself.

Can you tell I'm working on my departmental coding standards? :-)

xoxo,
Andy

%_=split/;/,".;;n;u;e;ot;t;her;c; ".   #   Andy Lester
'Perl ;@; a;a;j;m;er;y;t;p;n;d;s;o;'.  #   http://petdance.com
"hack";print map delete$_{$_},split//,q<   andy@petdance.com   >

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.