At 10:59 AM 8/4/00 +0200, Johan Vromans wrote:
> > What if the default strictness of vars was a compile-time option to
> > be decided by the administrator of each site?
>
>Good grief, no! Perl should be perl, and not depend on site issues.
>And, in anticipation: yes, there _is_ a difference between "you must
>install module FooBar.pm 3.14 before you can use this" and "you need
>to rebuild your perl".
It would not be "you need to rebuild your perl", but "the administrator of
this site does not allow unstrict programming by default."
Letting sites set strictness by default is just a way of giving some
control to the ones who want it, not denying it to the ones who don't.
I would like to go further and allow sites the ability to make perls that
*can't* disable certain strictnesses, although that may not be viable with
the strictnesses we have right now. Perl doesn't outlaw fascism (witness
closures-as-objects); it just requires it be optional.
This is a (not *the*) key to the acceptance of Perl for large projects in
large institutions. You don't have to work for one or like the way they go
about things, but if we can give them something that doesn't hurt everyone
else then it's a win. At least by the "Big House" philosophy.
--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies
