Re: RFC 16 (v1) Keep default Perl free of constraints su

[mjd-perl-list-language-strict]

> On Fri, Aug 04, 2000 at 11:37:30AM -0700, Peter Scott wrote:
> > It would not be "you need to rebuild your perl", but "the administrator of 
> > this site does not allow unstrict programming by default."

It's a stupid idea.  

OK, my admin has decided not to allow unstrict programming.  Then I
get a program from somewhere and it has some lines in it that look
like

        if (ref $foo eq HASH) { 
         ...
        }

and now my program won't run and it can't be made to run.  Why not?
Because my admin decided, on my behalf, that it is too dangerous to
have a program on the system which might someday do the wrong thing if
some hypothetical programmer were to someday modify it to have a
subroutine named HASH.  Oh.  Why is it too dangerous?  I don't know, I
guess because if it were modified in that way, it might then have a
bug.  A BUG!  In SOFTWARE!  On MY SYSTEM!  A program on MY SYSTEM
MIGHT HAVE A BUG!!!!!!  CALL IN THE NATIONAL GUARD!!!

Never mind that I can download a million buggy programs in Perl, and a
million other buggy programs in a thousand other languages, and run
them to my heart's content.  This one program with a bareword string
must be forbidden.  Even if it perfectly bug-free today, it might
someday *acquire* a bug, so it must be illegal.

Duh.

It does not make sense to allow the site administrator to dictate tiny
stylistic details in the program source code.  How would you feel
about a compile-time option that let the admin specify that programs
will not be run unless they are properly indented?