system returning true on failure, false on success. I know why it's doing that, I know where it's coming from (and that's why), but it still makes me gag each and every time I use it.
open not returning a file handle, but modifying its first argument. There are other functions modifying their first argument (push and friends, 4-arg substr, chomp/chop), but you kind of expect those. open doing so seems to do it for no other reason of mimicing the underlaying C functionality.
Perl has every important flow control keyword used by other important languages, and then some. But it doesn't have a (native) switch. Or rather, it still doesn't have one. While it was on the wishlist of perl 1.0.0.
Ok, so Perl has this IO system that used to be a thin layer over your systems IO system, and now (with PerlIO) mimics it, but still looks the same. And while I can easily lock entire files, why can't I easily lock file regions on systems that support it?
perl -wce 'chomp ($_)'
-e syntax OK
perl -wce '$_ = log ($_)'
-e syntax OK
perl -wce 'print ($_)'
print (...) interpreted as function at -e line 1.
-e syntax OK
perl -wce 'print ($_)'
-e syntax OK
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
