Maintainability is an interaction between code, users, and programmers. I think that most "Perl hackers" would prefer to work with eduardo's code. Most people who put Perl on their resumes would prefer what dws produced.

I personally prefer working with people who can figure out things like:

$freq_count{$_}++ for get_words(<>);

# Takes one or more strings, returns all words it finds.
sub get_words {
  map /(\w+(?:'[ts])?)/g, @_;
}
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This is difficult subject to discuss without histrionics. I mentioned on the CB one day that I try to avoid the use of $_ because I think it makes code harder to read, and it was not a very popular notion.

Most of the advanced people on this site would certainly prefer eduardo's version, but my experience has been that many of the people I have to work with every day just don't know Perl well enough to quickly grok stuff like $frequency{$_}++ for (split /\W/, <>) quickly. Because of this, I try to stick to the more standard control structures when I can, and especially avoid stacking up a lot of operations on one line.

I still use things like map, grep, hash slices, and extended regular expressions, but not when something simpler will work with similar efficiency.

I try to avoid the use of $_ because I think it makes code harder to read ...

Well, i suppose you are likewise going to start removing 'it' from your vocabulary. ;)

But i agree that $_ can be abused.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)