And chmod and chown look weird, just specifying a list. For example:
chmod LIST
when the detail says the first element must be the mode. This is better written as:
chmod MODE, LIST
Actually, the terse syntax examples given in the Perl documentation convey subtle meaning to those who are aware of the conventions being used and changing "chmod LIST" to "chmod MODE,LIST" would convey incorrect information to such people. (To become such a person, in part, one just needs to read, understand, and remember the 2nd paragraph of perlfunc.)
$ say "prototype('CORE::chmod')"
@
I don't mind being told "mkdir FILENAME" because it hints at this possibility:
$ perl -e'mkdir("$ENV{HOME}/.bashrc") or die $!,$/'
File exists
I started down the road of proposing that one of those conventions might actually be involved in the choice of "FILENAME" over "DIRNAME", because I noticed this:
$ perldoc perlfunc | grep FILENAME | egrep '^ *[a-z]+ [A-Z]'
chroot FILENAME
mkdir FILENAME,MASK
mkdir FILENAME
rmdir FILENAME
sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE
sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
$ say 'map prototype("CORE::$_"), qw/ chroot mkdir rmdir sysopen /'
_
_;$
_
*$$;$
But that doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons.
I also noticed:
$ perldoc perlfunc | grep DIRNAME
$ perldoc perlfunc | grep FILENAME | wc -l
16
So, how does opendir describe its argument?
$ perldoc -f opendir | head -1
opendir DIRHANDLE,EXPR
Now, that needs to say "DIRHANDLE" and not "FILEHANDLE", because you can't use a Perl DIRHANDLE as a Perl FILEHANDLE so that distinction is rather important. There is no such distinction between a FILENAME and a DIRNAME for Perl (nor for Unix, nor for Windows).
But why is that "EXPR" and not "FILENAME"? Well, it is a common choice:
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}readlink [A-Z]'
readlink EXPR
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}lstat [A-Z]'
lstat EXPR
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}do [A-Z]'
do BLOCK
do SUBROUTINE(LIST)
do EXPR Uses the value of EXPR as a filename and executes the c
+ontents
One could argue that "do EXPR" helps to convey the point that "any (other) expression gets interpretted as a file name" as opposed to possibly implying that Perl does something like looking at the value to see if it looks like a file name.
[ I was surprised to (re)learn this:
$ perl -we "do findModule(); sub findModule{'nonesuch.pl'}"
Use of "do" to call subroutines is deprecated at -e line 1.
]
And that might explain the choice of "EXPR" for these cases as well:
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}truncate [A-Z]'
truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH
truncate EXPR,LENGTH
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}stat [A-Z]'
stat FILEHANDLE
stat EXPR
stat DIRHANDLE
Though, I think the case of noticing FILEHANDLE and DIRHANDLE exceptions really is about examining the value not about different syntax, so I find the "EXPR" choice less valuable here. But changing "stat EXPR" to "stat FILENAME" draws too much attention to the distinction between "FILE" and "DIR" in:
stat FILEHANDLE
stat FILENAME
stat DIRHANDLE
While I think changing "DBNAME" to "FILENAME" would significantly improve the clarity here:
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}dbmopen [A-Z]'
dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MASK
(Because "DBNAME" isn't a "FILENAME" in most contexts I deal with -- though, perhaps "FILENAME" was avoided since suffixes likely get appended.)
How about places that don't use "EXPR"?
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}link '
link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
$ perldoc perlfunc | egrep '^ {7}rename '
rename OLDNAME,NEWNAME
I find "OLDNAME" a much better choice than "OLDFILE". Similar to the starting complaint, "OLDFILE" could be the name of a directory. But more important, for me, is that "OLDFILE" doesn't as clearly convey that what is given is the name of a file not some handle or other representation. I also wouldn't go more explicit like these:
link OLDFILENAME,NEWFILENAME
rename OLDFILENAME,NEWFILENAME
because I would worry about implying that these can't be used on directories [which isn't something I worry about implying for mkdir() or rmdir()]. One could argue for:
link OLDNAME,NEWLINKNAME
but I'd probably depart even further and go with:
link DESTNAME,NEWNAME
(I've long found the argument order for link,3 and ln quite confusing, I must admit.)
After considering the broader context, I think most of the uses of "FILENAME" really should be changed to "DIRNAME". Not because I find those uses of "FILENAME" confusing or inappropriate, but because they are cases where the distinction doesn't matter and so "DIRNAME" is just slightly clearer. (I find many cases that are a lot more in need of improvement than the one that started this thread.)
Contrast that with changing "lstat EXPR" to "lstat FILENAME". I don't like "lstat FILENAME" as it sounds like it might be trying to imply that you can't use it on directories or links, but only on plain files. But I also see no reason to use "EXPR" for that case. I think I prefer "lstat PATHNAME".
So my updates would only be as follows:
So I'd explicitly leave these unchanged:
chmod LIST
chown LIST
do BLOCK
do SUBROUTINE(LIST)
do EXPR
rename OLDNAME,NEWNAME
sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE
sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
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