On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 07:46:08PM -0400, Uri Guttman wrote: > >>>>> "NC" == Nicholas Clark <n...@ccl4.org> writes: > > > NC> You've stated that you *don't* expect newbies to know how to read > NC> that line. Leo is currently looking for things that newbies could > NC> be expected to read. > > then you will get one liners that don't do much. you can't have it both > ways. either they are useful or they are so simple that newbies can read > them. using modules isn't a way around that as they shouldn't use one > without understanding it. so my way is to show how useful a small amount > of perl can be. get them intrigued and wanting to learn how to do > that. i haven't seen anything else posted here that is even close to > useful and cool and newbie level yet. but everyone can jump on > mine. wow.
I suspect the important thing here is TMTOWTDI . To be absolutely honest I couldn't come up with a one-liner like the one you suggested. However it was interesting to read it. I won't pretend I learned how to write good one-liners from it but maybe by reading and working through more of the same I could improve. But I am not a Perl newbie. And I do agree about the maintenance issue. But a Perl newbie today might have to maintain such code tomorrow. Perhaps the concept that Leon is working on could be extended to more intermediate levels as well? Kind Regards Lesley