[sf-perl] use {strict,warnings}

[Joe Brenner]

frosty <biztos at mac.com> wrote:

> I think disabling warnings is a slippery slope even in a local
> context.  I suppose if everyone in an organization agreed that
> uninitialized warnings were the enemy it could make sense, but then
> why not take your case to the Perl community at large?

> Of course sometimes you really have to disable warnings of some type
> locally or you'll go nuts, but I try to think of that as a last resort
> and limit it to the smallest possible context.

I think I'm largely in agreement with you here. I do know
that you can shut off a class of warnings lexically, and I
hope it would be obvious that it's best to do this as
minimally as possible.

I think the question for me might be boiled down to this one code
example.  Is it better to code something like this:

  use warnings;
  use strict;

  my @phrases = (
              'The Rediscovery of Man',
              'The Instrumentality',
              'D\'Joan',
  );

  foreach my $phrase (@phrases) {
    my ($alpha, $ralpha, $blvd) = split ' ', $phrase;
    {
      no warnings 'uninitialized';
      print " 1: $alpha\n 2: $ralpha\n 3: $blvd\n\n";
    }
  }

Or should that last loop be handled something like this:

  foreach my $phrase (@phrases) {
    my ($alpha, $ralpha, $blvd) = (' ', ' ', ' ');
    ($alpha, $ralpha, $blvd) = split ' ', $phrase;
    $alpha  ||='';
    $ralpha ||='';
    $blvd   ||='';
    print " 1: $alpha\n 2: $ralpha\n 3: $blvd\n\n";
  }

In this particular case it's something of a wash in terms of
complexity or dangerousness, but you don't have to think as
hard about the second way, so I think that one wins.

I would guess that just leaving warnings on all the time wins
often enough that you're better off doing it that way by
default, and living with the occasional minor pain.