SPUG: A little style question....

[Stephen Nickels]

I've got a quasi-perl, quasi-programming-style question for y'all.
I've gone back and forth with a friend of mine on this one, so I thought
I'd get some more professional opinions. My question is: here docs, good
or bad?

(aka:
$output =<<TEXT;
Blah blah blah $variable blah blah
TEXT
)

I consider them a very helpful part of programming, especially web
scripting, allowing you to either output or save to an output variable
large pieces of formatted and interpolated text; they're great for
outputting html. My friend, however, considers them the spawn of the
underworld, believing that all good programs should work exactly the same
after having all groups of spaces and/or newlines replaced with a single
space. (aka, $code =~ s/[\s\n]+/ /g;) Line-delimited things like here docs
break this rule of his quite severly.

So what are some of the general opinions of perl-mongers out there? Are
here docs a useful addition to programming languages, or are they bad
form?

Thanks a lot!



"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk
the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been,
and there you will always long to return"
					-Leonardo da Vinci


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