Aristotle++. Thankyou for putting into words, something I have been wanting to say ever since seeing some of the replies to 202482, but couldn't word appropriately.

If I post a node, and it stays stubbornly at 0. Fine. Whatever I said was not very useful, possible only had meaning in the context of the thread etc. Not wrong nor bad or most important of all, not technically invalid. Just nothing worthy of anyones vote. That's fine.

As you said, if it gathers some ++'s great. The effort expended was worth it. A few someone's found it interesting or useful.

But when a post, especially one that has taken some effort, and contains (as 202437 does), a working solution, and embedded proof that it does work (at least under some circumstances) and it starts gathering --'s, I go back and check:

1. Does it contain factual errors?
2. Does it contain something blatently rude, condesending or facecious?
3. Did I misread the OP's needs or answer the wrong question?

If so, I usually try and correct my errors or admit to my mistakes by striking (in deference to the unwritten "don't change history" rule, despite the fact that I disagree vehemently with both the sentiment and the reasoning) whatever was wrong and correcting or apologising.

The reason why I chose to withdraw a post entirely, was if working code is somehow wrong, then it must be because it is dangerous or misleading, in which case, allowing it to perpetuate is a 'bad thing', and so I didn't. Instead, I chose to attempt to come up with a better solution.

That I lost a few XP, Bah, Humbug! Simply makes up for some of my other posts that have gathered a positive rep dis-proportionate to the effort I put in like this where all I did was give a pointer something I had recently read or had bookmarked. Or this where I was simply the first to notice something glaringly obvious. Or this that represents the simple 10 second cut&paste of readily available information. It rankles slightly that these get ++'d when other nodes containing (what I believe to be) good Perl, which I've put considerable effort into, go by hardly noticed, but you quickly get used to the fact that such are the fickle mannerisms of the Monastery.