On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 08:18, Juerd wrote: > Perl 5 has the qx// operator which does readpipe. I believe the function > for it was added later. (It doesn't handle a LIST as system does, > unfortunately.) qx// is also known as ``. Two backticks. > > readpipe/qx/`` isn't used much. In all my @INC, only a handful of uses > can be found. Most are in Debian's modules. > > Why should readpipe get to cheat on the huffman thing?
>From a source tree I work with (which I cannot divulge code from, but I think statistics like this are fine): $ find . -name \*.pl | wc -l 330 $ find . -name \*.pl -exec grep -hlE 'qx|`|`|readpipe' {} \; | wc -l 123 `` gets used an awful lot, just usually not in modules where the process control issues surrounding even system() tend to yield a module unusable for the general case, even though it might be fine in a more specific one. I could take or leave `` because I don't like unbalanced quote operators, and I see qx{} as just as good if not better, but to remove it on the basis of the lack of use is faulty. I would have preferred that Perl 6 used the bash/zsh-style: $(...) But we have other designs on that. -- Aaron Sherman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Systems Engineer and Toolsmith "It's the sound of a satellite saying, 'get me down!'" -Shriekback