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Postings from July 2012
On 07/18/2012 12:40 PM, Jesse Luehrs wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 09:38:37PM +0300, Leon Timmermans wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Paul Johnson <paul@pjcj.net> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 11:44:35PM -0700, l.mai@web.de wrote:
>>>
>>>> % perl -we '"qwertasd"'
>>>> Useless use of a constant ("qwertasd") in void context at -e line 1.
>>>>
>>>> % perl -we '"dsatrewq"'
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Any string starting with "di", "ds", or "ig" is exempt from "void context"
>>>> warnings. I can't find any documentation for this misfeature. It should be
>>>> removed from the interpreter.
>>>
>>>
>>> It's not really a misfeature. It's more of an old feature. The code
>>> explains why it's there:
>>>
>>> op.c:1473
>>> /* perl4's way of mixing documentation and code
>>> (before the invention of POD) was based on a
>>> trick to mix nroff and perl code. The trick was
>>> built upon these three nroff macros being used in
>>> void context. The pink camel has the details in
>>> the script wrapman near page 319. */
>>>
>>> As far as documentation is concerned, I suppose that it wouldn't be a
>>> bad thing to make a note of this somewhere.
>>>
>>> As far as removing it is concerned, I presume that no one is writing new
>>> code in this way, and probably hasn't for a few years. So the removal
>>> is a trade-off between a slight standardisation and simplification and
>>> breaking backwards compatibility with some perl4 era programs.
>>>
>>> I would side with keeping backwards compatibility.
>>
>> Considering this is a warning that has to be enabled explicitly, and
>> that we're talking about perl 4 compatibility here, I wouldn't care
>> too much about such a minor break of backwards compatibility. I'd be
>> surprised if this was the first time in the past 18 years that such a
>> thing happened.
>
> +1
>
> -doy
>
+1
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