On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 10:03:16PM +1000, Graham Smith wrote: > STDIN is the constant for the predefined variable $stdin although you could > use $< but I believe it is not very descriptive and difficult to read in a > whole lot of code, unless you know all the symbols and their meanings off by > heart..
Amen. The symbolic variables, so beloved of Perl programmers, belies Ruby's origins as a "different Perl" (hence the name, even). Over time, though, those symbolic variables have lost popularity (for the very good reasons that Graham mentions), to the point that I think I recall reading that Ruby 2.0 will remove them entirely. As far as STDIN vs. $stdin, looking back over my code I see that I've been using $stdin more, but I don't know why that is. I'd say that either is equally readable, but it's important to be consistent across a particular program -- if you start using $stdin, keep using it. Don't swap between the two -- that *will* confuse people mightily (and possibly even break your program, if you start doing silly buggers with one or the other of them). - Matt _______________________________________________ coders mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/coders
