Re^2: Perl program to search files

[Tux]

Note the use of a statement modifier in the second case. In general, statement modifiers should be preferred over compound statements whenever a single statement is involved, as this simplifies the code.

I STRONGLY oppose to this statement. This might be true for you, but I personally hate statement modifiers used for this, as it causes me to read code backwards, which is a maintenance nightmare.

IF simplification to one-liners is required, I use it the other way round (TIMTOWTDI)

if ($VERBOSE) { PRINT ("SEARCHING: ", FormatPath ($PATH)); }          
+    # original

$VERBOSE and printf "" %-8dSEARCHING: %s\n", $TOTAL, FormatPath ($PATH
+);  # Readable and understandable

printf " %-8dSEARCHING: %s\n", $TOTAL, FormatPath ($PATH) if $VERBOSE;
+    # unmaintanable

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

Agree. This seems to be a matter of personal taste as indicated by the discussion at: A matter of style: how to perform a simple action based on a simple condition?

In addition to preferring block-if to postfix-if I always use the multi-line form of block-if. Why? Consider changing:

if ($VERBOSE) {
   PRINT("SEARCHING ...");
}

to:

if ($VERBOSE) {
   # Do something else here ... or just add a clarifying comment
   PRINT("SEARCHING ...");
}

With multi-line block-if that's an easy to understand one line change and easier to understand at a glance when looking at the change history of the file in version control. OTOH, with postfix-if, adding a second statement to the if condition requires making more and harder-to-understand code changes.