On 08/14/2013 01:03 PM, Abigail wrote:
On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 12:35:19PM -0400, Avishalom Shalit wrote:wait, aren't $a and $b special ? (they magically live for {$a<=>$b} etc. )They are only special in special cases. Outside of that, they are as friendly as your other variable. People who pipe up upon seeing some code that uses $a and $b for illustrative purposes, predicting hell and doom even if there's no sort in that code behave like mindless grasshoppers, incapable of thinking for themselves. They probably also argue one shouldn't take water with you in a desert, because more people drown in water than in any other liquid.
$a and $b are never checked under strict. so using them outside of sort can lead to bugs from typos and such. in the right circles using them for demo code is ok but newbies (who seem to like single letter names which is bad in general) will use them in real code and could get trapped. i say it is better not to use them in demo code for that reason. it is just good training (and not to use single letter names anyone except for maybe $i, $j, $x, $y in proper context)
use $foo and $bar for demo code as those are strict checked and the classic metasyntactic names.
uri -- Uri Guttman - The Perl Hunter The Best Perl Jobs, The Best Perl Hackers http://PerlHunter.com
