(dws)Re: Perverse Unreadable Code

I have also seen people doing horrors like putting if statements after the code to be excuted.

If the tools you've grown up with lack the descriptive power of Perl, you might well think that such a feature is a horror. But once you've done a bit of Perl and get used to it, you may find yourself cursing the lack of descriptive power of other tools.

To my eye print "About to fetch $url\n" if $debug; is more readable, and less disruptive to reading flow, than

  if ( $debug ) {
      print "About to fetch $url\n";
  }
[download]

As with any feature, this one can be abused. Which is why it's important to distinguish between the perversity of the tool and the perversity of the tool user.

In Section Perl Monks Discussion