SPUG: Too long to find bug: Fat comma and assignment look similar, and have some similar meaning

Charles DeRykus derykus at gmail.com
Thu Jan 14 11:50:26 PST 2010


On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Michael R. Wolf <michaelrwolf at att.net>wrote:

> use strict;
> use warnings;
> ...
> my $x => rand;
>  die 'Did you notice fat comma instead of assignment? Variable did not >
get
set' unless defined $x;

> In retrospect, what had me miss it was:
>  1 - the visual similarity between '=' and '=>'
>  2 - the similarity of meaning between "gets" (assignment) and "gets
>  associated with" (fat comma's common use in creating hash key/value >
pairs)

> Can you think of a good use of fat comma (or skinny comma, for that
> matter) in this context?  Or, framed differently, why shouldn't (or can't)
it
> get a warning like "Strange mixture of declaration, stringification, and
> function call in void context"?

I can't think of good use for fat/skinny comma in that context but
maybe a more devious mind is needed..

It does seem odd that rand (srand too) don't warn since other
arithmetic functions do:

  perl -wle 'my $x => sin'
  Useless use of sin in void context ...
  Use of uninitialized value $_ in sin ...

  and similiar warnings for cos, exp, int, log ..

-- 
Charles DeRykus
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