Re: How do I train myself to write more Perl-ish Perl, rather than C-ish Perl?

[LighthouseJ]

I'm the king of writing C-ish Perl at least on the initial attempts. I know assembly code so I understand how much of a luxury C is so I'm eager to use it.

When I get to use Perl, my initial edits reek of C-style editing. However, as I refine the code, I shed the C-code and get to use pure Perl.

I have noticed that to shed the C-code, you pretty much have to exclusively use only the Perl functions. Take the obfuscations that people write, they are incarnations of pure Perl facilities, usually in obfuscated forms.

Sure, I could write a Perl program:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
{
    my $i = 0;
    for ($i = 0; $i<10; $i++) {
    print ("count $i\n");
    }
}

Not only is that not obfuscated but it's also very C-like. The only difference is identifying variables with dollar signs, and using print instead of printf (for it's closest-named C counterpart).

Now if I was going to shake off the C-style, I'd look for Perl-specific ways of streamlining this program. Eventually, after several iterations (because I don't claim to be a super perl programmer, just aware enough to do damage), I might be satisfied on this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
print "count $_\n" for (0..9);

Not counting the interpreter line and use strict, see how I reduce everything down to only the things I need? I need to print something, state the format including where to put the variable, then repeat. That's all, no variable declarations, traditional loop structures, etc...

When you use Perl-specific mechanisms, that is only the minimum need to do the job, there won't be any use for traditional C-style coding behavior.