OTOH, there's a lot of "overcompensating" going on in Perl code, especially in forums like this in comp.lang.perl.misc. What I mean is things like using complicated code to avoid a warning, where it would have been easier to turn of warnings (or strict). Or to use several lines of Perl code (or an entire module) to avoid having to use system or backticks.

You might want to say that someone using

    system cp => $from, $to and die "Eeps";
[download]

comes from a shell background and has just learned Perl from a (bad) book. But it might also be someone with 20 years of Unix experience, and 8 years of Perl experience who's just using the toolkit concept and can't be bothered with using a module. (Wait, that sounds like me).

I do use system more than I really, really have to, I've never used File::Find (or is it Find::File), prefering to read from a find pipe instead, I do use for (my $i = 0; $i < @arr; $i ++) even if I could use for my $i (0 .. $#arr) instead, and more "tell tale" signs of coming from a different background.

I think that Perl more than most other languages allow a programmer to keep using his/her unique, or carried over, style. That is, IMO, one of the good things of Perl.

To quote Geoff Gerrietts, in comp.lang.perl.misc article of 26 July 1996: Perl lays down like a wanton woman and lets me have my way with her.

Abigail

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