Do you have any coding superstitions?

I just was about to type $g->{'KeyWords'} and I thought, "this is crazy". Because I *know* I don't need the quotes. But somewhere at the back of my psyche is a half-remembered piece of advice, perhaps from my own anxiety-gland, that it's always a good idea to "get into the habit" in case I should ever have a key with whitespace in it.

Forget that I've never used, and never would use, a hash key with whitespace. All my Perl life I've been using quotes in hash keys. And it's become something I *have* to do... like you went through a phase of not stepping on the cracks between paving stones? Or *always* stepping on the cracks? I keep doing it, knowing that it's pointless, but being irrationally loth to stop.

Well, Perlmonks must stand for casting light into the irrational corners of our code, and so I take this opportunity (A) to renounce my superstition and (B) offer a space for other monks similarly afflicted to come into the light of day.

I, George_Sherston hereby renounce my obsessive urge to place quotes around hash keys even when they don't have whitespace.

§ George Sherston