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Re: [perl #54974] Strange map {} Behavior When Returning Two Values

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From:
Abigail
Date:
May 30, 2008 07:28
Subject:
Re: [perl #54974] Strange map {} Behavior When Returning Two Values
Message ID:
20080530142754.GA1220@abigail.be
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 03:16:31PM +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> * H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl> [2008-05-29 13:00]:
> > using a semi-colon
> > $ perl -wle'my@a=map{;"--$_"=>$_}@ARGV;print"(@a)"' foo bar
> > (--foo foo --bar bar)
> > 
> > using parens
> > $ perl -wle'my@a=map{("--$_"=>$_)}@ARGV;print"(@a)"' foo bar
> > (--foo foo --bar bar)
> > 
> > using a unary +
> > $ perl -wle'my@a=map{+"--$_"=>$_}@ARGV;print"(@a)"' foo bar
> > (--foo foo --bar bar)
> > 
> > using catenation
> > $ perl -wle'my@a=map{"--".$_=>$_}@ARGV;print"(@a)"' foo bar
> > (--foo foo --bar bar)
> > 
> > I personally think that using parens here to disambuigate is
> > the most verbose option without adding unexplainable line noise
> 
> Which in my mind makes it the least desirable, since that makes
> it ???obviously??? superfluous and therefore the most likely to be
> removed by some overeager maintainer. The semicolon, OTOH, is so
> unusual that it is much more obviously intentional, even if the
> maintainer who discovers it doesn???t know what it???s there for. It
> probably won???t prevent them from removing it, but I would expect
> that after the code breaks they will conclude that the semicolon
> was put there purposely to prevent that error. With parens, in
> contrast, it seems more likely to me that the maintainer will
> think the code worked just by accident because the previous
> programmer wrote it in a peculiar style with no particular
> intent.


I guess it's matter of style, but I prefer the parenthesis as well.  The
semi-colon is unual enough that it mystefies many people. The overeager
maintainer who removes the parenthesis will be left code that doesn't
compile, let alone pass a test suite. I'm not so worried about that;
it'll be a simple delete 2 chars, compile, undo cycle.  Worse would be
a maintainer that wastes half a day what the hell the semi-colon is for.


Abigail

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