[Pdx-pm] evil @ARGV syntax

Eric Wilhelm ewilhelm at sbcglobal.net
Tue Jul 19 12:50:25 PDT 2005


# from Michael G Schwern
# on Tuesday 19 July 2005 12:14 pm:

>On Tue, Jul 19, 2005 at 11:05:05AM -0700, Randall Hansen wrote:
>> which seems like a complicated way of writing:
>>
>>      if( @ARGV < 1 or @ARGV > 2 ) {

I'm guessing the next step is to die with a usage message or otherwise 
complain about the number not being 1|2

>The ironic thing is this is all a really complicated way of saying the
> much more natural:
>
>	# if I got 1 or 2 args...
>	if( @ARGV == 1 or @ARGV == 2 ) {
>		...
>	}

You've reversed the intent though.

  unless(@ARGV == 1 or @ARGV == 2) {
    die "you must guess the correct number of arguments\n";
  }

Maybe they started in a language without an "unless" or for some other 
reason chose to write the negative form of the OK condition instead of 
negating the OK condition.

  if(not (@ARGV == 1 or @ARGV == 2)) {

I prefer to use unless(everything_is_okay()) since I think it reads 
better.  If Randall is in the sweet vengeful position of being able to 
return maintenance to the original author, maybe he would like to 
initiate a perl crash-course with the more conversational:

  unless(scalar(@ARGV) =~ m/^(?:1|2)$/) {

Of course that's a little hairbrained, but I don't see any functional 
holes in it right now.

IIRC, perl6 going to have something like (like!) $num == $this or $that, 
which is pronounced the same as the above but with less stuttering.

--Eric
-- 
"Everything goes wrong all at once."
--Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law
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