Re^3: Consider this: What makes a good node title?

in reply to Re^2: Consider this: What makes a good node title?
in thread Consider this: What makes a good node title?

I too, in my humble opinion, find "program line" to be a horrible title. It's not a question. It's a thing. It's ambigious. Congratulations if you can correctly guess what the question is going to be, but i find that there a lot of poorly chosen subject titles because it is hard to come up with a synopsis that describes the question succintly enough to fit. Most SoPW are too busy concentrating on their problem, and coming up with a good title is second to getting their question answered.

"How Do I Get the Line Number In My Error Message?" is much much better, in my humble opinion.

Even better would have been "How Do I Get the Program Line Number In My Error Message?" ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Comment on Re^3: Consider this: What makes a good node title?

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__DATE__ ? by Anonymous Monk on Nov 04, 2005 at 18:31 UTC
What do you think of something like "__DATE__ ?" for a node title? It seems like it would be pretty clear to any C programmer that the Seeker was looking for the perl equivalent to the `__DATE__` macro. And since Perl has __FILE__ and __LINE__, I think most monks could figure out the intent of the question even if they didn't know a lick of C. Thoughts?	[reply] [d/l]
Re: __DATE__ ? by betterworld (Curate) on Nov 04, 2005 at 18:47 UTC
In C, __DATE__ is a way to retrieve the compile date. But in Perl, compiling and running are done by the same process, so we could just do something like `my $compile_time; BEGIN { $compile_time = time; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: __DATE__ ? by japhy (Canon) on Nov 04, 2005 at 19:56 UTC
`$^T` works just as well! Jeff `japhy` Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and `perl` hacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: Consider this: What makes a good node title? (__DATE__ ?) by sauoq (Abbot) on Nov 04, 2005 at 19:45 UTC
Well, in the context of this thread, I'd call it misleading... But, that aside, if it were the title of a top level SoPW and related to either the __DATE__ preprocessor constant—which is available in perl if you use -P, by the way^†—or even if someone just typo'd __DATA__, I'd say it should be left as is. † Not that you should do be doing that... -sauoq "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";	[reply]
Re: __DATE__ ? by jeffa (Bishop) on Nov 04, 2005 at 19:05 UTC
You read the question first and then figure out what you think would be a better title. Perhaps "What is Perl's equivalent to C's __DATE__ macro" or "What is __DATA__ used for?" (__DATE__ is very close to __DATA__ after all) Then, you don't change the title. You consider the node and give your suggestion for the new title and let the other janitors give their thoughts on the title. jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B-- H---H---H---H---H---H--- (the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)	[reply]

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