[Perl-beginners] Syntax for if

[Perl-beginners] Syntax for if

	7
	Feb 9, 2010 at 4:07 am

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Chris Coggins wrote:

Thanks Jim. I used

exit(0) unless $varA;

That form of unless is especially poor style.

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7: Because unless and until statements are harder to *read and maintain*, NO ONE should use them--least of all beginners.

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Uri Guttman: 7> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Uri Guttman wrote: 7> 7> if (defined $var && ($var eq '' || $var eq '0')) { 7> 7> #code 7> 7> } 7> 7> to handle cases where $var = undef. undef acts like it is a blank 7> 7> string when used as a string. 7> blah.. 7> unless( $var ) { 7> is all you need for that situation. you are already testing three of the 7> four allowed false values. and the numeric 0 would be covered under the 7> eq '0' test anyhow. 7> newbies should be taught perl's boolean false values
Uri Guttman: 7> Because unless and until statements are harder to maintain, NO ONE should 7> use them--least of all beginners. 7> Because unless and until statements are harder to *read and maintain*, NO ONE 7> should use them--least of all beginners. wrong again. unless is very commonly used by decent perl hackers. i teach its use when i can. it obviates the need for extraneous ! ops and reads better as it is one word vs 'if not' which is two. simpler is better. now unless/else is an abomination which
7: they both read fine in english which is why they we included by They don't both read fine. To many people, unless is a confusing construct. Larry has made plenty of mistakes designing perl. 7> Because unless and until statements are harder to maintain, NO ONE Then you are teaching poor coding style. 'if not' is two words but it is not more easily understood than 'abaca'; therefore I find your 'number of words' test faulty. I would imagine that most people have to mentally translate 'unless' to

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posted	Feb 9, '10 at 12:39a
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[Perl-beginners] Syntax for if

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