Re: Perl mnemonics

[zentara]

Like dragonchild, I go with the mental image.....one picture is worth a thousand words. I never was good at remembering poems, limericks, or jokes; but I can pull an image out of my memory easily. Also, If you are not actually cramming for a closed book test, why not just take a quick look at some code snippets (either in your personal snippet lib or search groups.google.com).

However, there was one recently that I do use, regarding the packing rules in Gtk2, which I just can't seem to get straight without looking at previous examples.

$vbox->pack_start ($widget, $expand, $fill, $padding);

it's the expand, fill, padding order that always gets me. So I remember

"extra fries please";

[TGI]

If I did Gtk2 programming, I'd probably call that order "WE FliP".

The pain of having to remember these orders is why any code I write that requires more than three arguments, gets modified to use named parameters. The downside is that you have to remember (and spell correctly) the parameter names, but that's what perldoc's for.

[BrowserUk]

but that's what perldoc's for.

Isn't it easier (or at least just as easy), to look up the ordering than names/spelling?

[TGI]

When I write the code I may have to look everything up in either case.

When I read the code, I understand named parameters without needing the docs.

I consider that a big improvement. YMMV. Each approach can bring its own subtle bugs.