[Posted and mailed] In article <238620000.1037824657@[192.168.200.4]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steven Lembark) writes: > > >-- Peter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Abigail) writes: >>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 11:42:43AM +0100, Bart Lateur wrote: >>>> On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 04:10:02 -0600, Steven Lembark wrote: >>>> >>>> > sub commify >>>> > { >>>> > my ( $max, $sep, $end ) = ( shift, shift, shift ); >>>> ... >>>> > } >>>> >>>> Wow! Hold it! Am I the only one who finds this absurd? More than one >>>> shift on the same array in one single expressing, sounds like bad style >>>> to me. Comments? >>> >>> Why is that bad style? Many times when people say it's bad style, >>> it's just a case of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". >> >> It forces the reader to think about associativity and order of evaluation. >> If you've been bitten by unexpected outcomes before you might have to >> try it to make sure it does what you think. >> >> I've used shift, shift before, so I already know. But it would be unfair >> to foist on a junior maintenance programmer, IMHO. > >Associativity?
Of the commas. A suitably paranoid programmer is going to wonder whether the results will occur in the expected order if they've not tried before. It won't occur to a novice. And an expert will already know. But someone in between may wonder. >This just takes the first three items >off the arguments (leaving the rest of it on @_), >puts them on a list, and assigns it. I've had more >problems with junior programmers botching the order >of separate assignments (or more often deleting one >out of the middle) than mis-understanding how shift >works. Even fewer of the people walking around >understand splice (which is where I came up with the >list-of-shifts). I don't think splice is that bad; it's a straightforward function. You have to make sure the count matches the number of elements on the left, just as you have to match the number of `shift's. An argument this subjective is unlikely to reach a definitive resolution. -- Peter Scott
