Re: Modern Perl: The Book: The Draft

[hexcoder]

Hi chromatic,
thanks for your work! Here are my review comments (caution: not from a native speaker):

Chapter 1:
3rd paragraph, 2nd sentence:
I find the wording (Its design goals ...) a bit complicated and hard to swallow.

4th paragraph, typo:
philsophies -> philosophies

5th paragraph in section 'Perldoc':
It describes each section of the documentation
instead of
It describes each section of documentation

1st paragraph, 2nd sentence of section 'Expressivity':
I do not understand the phrase
... inform Perl's design
I suggest
... influenced Perl's design

3rd paragraph, 1st sentence (yes, but please let this style be the absolute exception, thank you :-)

1st sentence of section 'Void, Scalar, and List Context'
The wording 'One of the axes' suggests orthogonality to me, as if there were (pure) arrays of strings as well as (pure) arrays of numbers. Since there are only arrays of scalars, I would phrase that as 'One of the aspects'.

Regarding the marked text 'Check how many other string functions this includes?' in section 'The Default Scalar Variable'; this question is answered in the book 'Effective Perl Programming', 2nd ed., on page 58

9th paragraph (Note that ...)
I suggest
must compare always two elements of its list
instead of
must process the elements of its list two at a time.

Chapter 3:
3rd sentence in section 'Variable Naming', typo
Variables
instead of
Varibles

[Anonymous Monk]

As a native speaker, I just want to remark that I disagree completely with each of your suggestions to rephrase. If I were the author, I would go on to illustrate my meaning in each of these cases and prod you for information on how I could really improve them, based on whatever unstated misunderstanding is actually troubling you.

But I'm not the author; I'm just an enthusiast of expression in such ways as provided by English and Perl. So, my curiosity is piqued: what is more awkward in the third paragraph of the first chapter than "must compare always two elements"?

[hexcoder]

Thanks, that is interesting to hear! If the original phrases are comprehensible, I need to work a bit on my skills...

BTW: i just noticed the book is really a moving target, as i cannot find the original text anymore.

Anyway, the vanished text under chapter 1, section 'The Default Scalar Variable' described the predeclared variables $a and $b, and reasoned that $_ could not be used in sort() because sort() 'must process the elements of its list two at a time'. This is correct of course (the elements are just not necessarily neighbors), but the wording suggested to me: sort() iterates on adjacent elements pairs of its list.

[Anonymous Monk]

Oh, that does sound like it was confusing. Misunderstandings like this is why more documents need version control!

[chromatic]

Thanks for all of your comments. Please let me know how you'd like me to credit you in the book's CREDITS file.