[Nh-pm] quoting list keys & values

[Ben Boulanger]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Erik Price wrote:
> So (apparently), Perl and PHP are similar in that quoting hash keys is 
> not enforced, nor is quoting list values that are string literals?  So 
> then, that begs the logical question, is it considered good form to 
> quote string literals in Perl (as in PHP) to avoid confusion with string 
> constants, or is that a personal choice?

It -is- considered good form to quote strings in Perl.  In fact, all of 
the perl scripts I write begin with perl -w and use strict - strict subs 
disallows unknown barewords (AFAIK) completely, where -w (warnings on) 
warns you about them.  For example:

[bboulanger at .. bboulanger]$ perl -e 'use strict; my $junk = blah;'
Bareword "blah" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

[bboulanger at .. bboulanger]$ perl -we 'my $junk = blah;'
Unquoted string "blah" may clash with future reserved word at -e line 1.

As for advice - I agree with Kevin - use #!/.../perl -w and use strict

Ben

-- 

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness