Re: Silly code reviews and shift

[Adam]

Ah! I've been mis-represented!

I have long used shift to manipulate named arguments, but not unnamed. Sometimes I like to use @_ unnamed, and sometimes I like to name everything in one fell swoop:

sub QuickAndDirty { return SubSubroutine( shift, 3, shift, 'etc' ) }

sub MultipleChoice {
    my $arg = @_ ? shift : die "Where is arg?";
    my $opt = @_ ? shift : 'default';
}

sub SetParams {
    die "Expected 3 args" unless 3 == @_;
    my ( $arg1, $arg2, $arg3 ) = @_;
}

Note that it is also important to realize that naming your arguments, as in the later examples, is equivalent to pass by copy. But Perl is actually a pass by reference language! An example:

  DB<7> sub s1 { $_[0] = 1 }

  DB<8> $g = 5

  DB<9> x $g
0  5
  DB<10> x s1( $g )
0  1
  DB<11> x $g
0  1

So, Tilly, please don't judge me by 3 posts, none of which includes a sub routine with named arguments.