Re: Name "main::a" used only once: possible typo (limitations of "sort" like functions)

[LanX]

Hi Gabor

> Why did the first example generate the warnings?

Wrong question. Since sort is a built-in, it was able to silence the warnings!

> What is the recommended way to silence them?

Use them twice?

> Why is this not mentioned in List::Util?

Maybe because the author is frustrated about not beeing able to simulate a built-in?

Seriously ...

... it's not that easy to design functional constructs with special variables in code-blocks like sort does.

I tried it in hgrep and then I was confronted with many scoping problems, what if the block is defined within another package or if $a and $b are declared as lexicals?

Look into the code of Hash::MostUtils to have an idea about the complications to solve all of this.

I bet that List::Util couldn't solve all of this.

UPDATE

To prove my last guess:

This prints 55, but after uncommenting the second line its only 0 ...oops!

use List::Util qw/reduce/;
# my ($a,$b)=(0,0);
print reduce { $b+=$a } 1..10;

UPDATE

and here the same problem for List::MoreUtils

use warnings;
use strict;

# my ($a,$b)=(0,0);

use List::MoreUtils qw/pairwise/;
my @a = (1 .. 5);
my @b = (11 .. 15);
my @x = pairwise { $a + $b } @a, @b;   # returns 12, 14, 16, 18, 20

use Data::Dump;
dd \@x;

UPDATE

At least sort simply dies

my ($a,$b)=(0,0);
print sort { $b cmp $a } 1..10;

Can't use "my $b" in sort comparison at ... line 2.

Update

...but

use warnings;
use strict;

our ($a,$b);

package Tst;

print sort { $b cmp $a } 1..10;

Use of uninitialized value $b in string comparison (cmp) at /home/lanx
+/B/PL/PM/ScopeListUtils.pl line 9.
Use of uninitialized value $a in string comparison (cmp) at /home/lanx
+/B/PL/PM/ScopeListUtils.pl line 9.
Use of uninitialized value $b in string comparison (cmp) at /home/lanx
+/B/PL/PM/ScopeListUtils.pl line 9.
Use of uninitialized value $a in string comparison (cmp) at /home/lanx
+/B/PL/PM/ScopeListUtils.pl line 9.
...

[szabgab]

LanX, what I don't understand is why this warning, and the way to deal with it by the user of the module is not mentioned in the documentation as a limitation of perl/the module.

If the situation I described is real, then I assume many people bump into it and many people think they are doing something wrong.

So unless the code I wrote has the flaw, it would IMHO better to warn the user about the warning.

[LanX]

> LanX, what I don't understand is why this warning, and the way to deal with it by the user of the module is not mentioned in the documentation as a limitation of perl/the module.

I can only suppose that the problems are so overwhelming, that the authors don't know how to describe them.