Re^2: Perl::Improved Volume 0, Number 0

[chromatic]

Not everything should be overly verbose

I don't think that's Wassercrats' point. It's easy to understand why the file test operators in the shell are so short -- they're common operations there. Based on my Perl corpus though, I don't use them often enough to justify two-character operators.

Now it'd be terrible practice for me to pronounce the one true way based on a single corpus, but as I mostly program applications and not administration scripts, I wouldn't mind terribly much using something like File::exists( 'filename' );.

[Solo]

File::exists( 'filename' );

This seems like a natural addition to English, but I think it would need something more like a source filter and less like the typeglob diddling of English, so it's not an easy addition.

Update: demerphq has the right of it... just a sub File::exists($) { -f $_[0] } would do it.

[demerphq]

demerphq has the right of it...

Well to be picky i think that that code will have a minor incompatibility with the normal file test operators regarding the magic filehandle '_', since File::stat() shares this problem I dont think its a showstopper really. And I guess if one doesn't like the current filetest names its unlikely that one would be happy with using the special filehandle:

$filesize=-s _ if (-e $foo);

would become

$filesize=File::size($foo) if File::exists($foo);

Which is of course less efficient.

[Anonymous Monk]

In 5.10, one will be able to write:

    if (-w -x -r $file) {....}