The pain of writing code to support the pragma may well be more than the pain saved by the compile time checking.
Oh, I would agree with that. I personally would not
use said pragmas. Then again, I don't even always
use strict (though I do use it in include files and
in large, complex programs, and I would certainly
use it in a module). However, there are some people
whose mindset just tends to prefer a lot of strict
rules. People who prefer Pascal over BASIC, if you
can imagine. People who use strict and warnings even
for one-liners and obfuscations. Those people would
probably appreciate the
ability to force all subs to be predefined, for
example. Of course, if they really want it, one of
them would have to step forward and implement it,
but what I was saying is that if it's done as a
pragma, we needn't object, because all you have to
do to be free of it is not bother to use the pragma.
That said, I'm not sure what the bondage pragma would
do. Perhaps require all control structures to have a
single entry and a single exit point (so, no next or
last permitted, to say nothing of early returns), I
suppose. I imagine the discipline pragma might
prohibit subroutines from accessing any variables
not lexically scoped within the subroutine, so that
any external variables would have to be passed in
as arguments to be used, and if they were to be
changed the results would have to be passed back
out as a return value and applied by the calling code.
I'm not sure what use pain would do, exactly, but I
suppose it would be even worse than discipline.
The really neat thing about these pragmas, if they
existed, would be that we could say, "C gives you
enough rope to hang yourself, but Perl gives you
enough rope to tie yourself up."
$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/
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[d/l] |
However, there are some people whose mindset just tends to prefer a lot of strict rules.
Ya! That's me!
People who prefer Pascal over BASIC, if you can imagine.
*waves hands* I even started in BASIC, back in, um, Middle School? But once I got to college, and Pascal and Scheme were the order of the day, I never looked back. I’m even trying to convince a co-worker to give up Visual Basic for C#, just so we can re-write, convert, and cleanup the vast stock of VB code in our environment.
People who use strict and warnings even for one-liners and obfuscations.
Well, maybe not that much. OTOH, I don't write obfuscations; it's enough of a struggle to me to write clear code.
Those people would probably appreciate the ability to force all subs to be predefined, for example.
Actually, no. I tend to think that would make the code less clear, not more. If I recall alright, it's mostly done in other languages due to compiler needs more than anything. I'd much rather have something where subs get "auto-rendered" into POD, so it's easier to write comments on subroutines (if you so wish); I think that would be much more useful, in terms of what someone reading your code would need, than any pre-declaration concept.
*ponders finding/writing such code..."Pod::Auto, anyone?"*
The really neat thing about these pragmas, if they existed, would be that we could say, "C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, but Perl gives you enough rope to tie yourself up."
HEH. *evil grin*
----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.
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