Re: my least favorite perl feature

[tall_man]

What is "overloaded" by design in perl is two possible values for every scalar: a string or a number. The comparison operators let you choose which. Do you want to give up either lexical or numeric sorting by overloading "<=>"?

By the way, if you "use warnings" perl will help you out, like so:

Argument "bbb" isn't numeric in numeric eq (==) at ddd.pl line 4.

[waxmop]

I would "use warnings", but in mason, it just isn't useful. For example, here's the message I get back when I "use warnings":

Mason error

error in file: /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/Carp/Heavy.pm
line 79: Bizarre copy of HASH in aassign
context: ...
75: # them according to the format variables defined earlier in
             76: 
               # this file and join them onto the $sub sub-routine str
+ing
             77: 
               if ($hargs) {
             78: 
               # we may trash some of the args so we take a copy
             79: 
               @a = @DB::args; # must get local copy of args
             80: 
               # don't print any more than $MaxArgNums
             81: 
               if ($MaxArgNums and @a > $MaxArgNums) {
             82: 
               # cap the length of $#a and set the last element to '..
+.'
             83: 
               $#a = $MaxArgNums;
             ... 

 component stack:  
             /orders_survey/search.html
 code stack:  
             /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/Carp/Heavy.pm:79

See what I mean?

[chromatic]

That's a bug in 5.6.0. Upgrading to 5.8 (or at least 5.6.1) ought to fix it.