Re: a learning exercise - diary program

[chromatic]

Things I would do slightly differently:

• Use a separate variable for the DIARY location (reusing variables for different things can be confusing)
• Return text from weather() instead of printing within the subroutine (do your printing all in one place)
• Create a timestamp() subroutine to format the times nicely
• (some time in the future) Create a separate get_diary_text() subroutine so you can add different entry methods as Elgon suggests

Nothing scares me about what you have now. It's solid code.

[a]

Just a guess, but there may be a misunderstanding in the reuse of *diary.

@diary = 'path/to/diary.txt';
open(DIARY,">>@diary") or die "can't open file: $!";

(its a good idea to do 'or die "can't open @diary: $!"' well not '@diary' but the var holding the file name in the die stmt, as in 'or die "can't open diary file $file: $!"') is odd and just sort of lucky. You're mixing the Array @diary in a scalar context, er, I think that'll just make

$diary[$[] eq "/path/to/diary.txt";

fortunately, putting the @diary in a quote context unrolls it as if join("", @diary) which gives you back "/path/to/dairy.txt"

a