Re: Don't go all PerlMonks on me

[perrin]

Good story. It makes an interesting point too: one person's basic sanity is another person's gold-plating. While I never write a program without strict and warnings because I find it harder, some people think those pragmas are a waste of time for a one-off program. This is something you have to be conscious of when trying to help others who may not share your views.

[talexb]

While I never write a program without strict and warnings because I find it harder, some people think those pragmas are a waste of time for a one-off program.

This quote should be framed.

I talked to two people about code craft recently; one asked why I would use strict in a script, and another asked if it was really necessary to close a file.

About using strict, I said it made about as much sense as wearing a seat belt -- skip it at your own risk. About not explicitly closing filehandles, I said that I always 1. open the file (and always with or die afterwards), 2. close the file, and 3. go back up to just after the open statement and do whatever it was I was going to do with the file.

Being lazy can be a good thing, but too much laziness can be a bad thing. It can be embarrassing spending 20 minutes chasing down a problem in a one-liner that you could have solved right away if you'd just used strict.