Thanks for the post, this is truly useful info to anyone that works with sci code.

The author appears to work in a Windows™ environment. This seems natural since the statistical word is filled with Windows™ software. I am thrilled that a native of the environment recognizes the power of a CLI and tools and strongly recommends it as useful.

I agree with another response that there is no comment on -w, use strict, or use warnings (I searched) but again note that this is from a Windows User™ and they don't have shebangs for one... I would agree that repeating these lines over and over in the code would be absurd, but they should at least get mentioned.

On the other hand the code is actually quite clear and with a casual glance (75 pages 10 minutes ;) appears to closely follow many of the recommendations of "Perl Best Practices". Perhaps a perl monkey with more seasoning than myself can shed more light on this.

One of the main points of the article is that there are numerous, easy to use extensions to Perl. This is developed by using several of them.

There are comments on what your next module project should be if you know stat maths, and the recommended testing methodologies with references. (The author simply states what is missing ;)

I plan to read it tonight and spend more than 10 minutes on the effort. If this thread shows any interest I'll post back anymore details I discover

The author does in fact make one very bad mistake, and that is to fall for the old trap of thinking that the pretty name for the suits (Practical Ext...) is in fact the real name. Perl is actually Pearl with a lazy spelling.

Note: When used as an acronym Perl actually stands for: Profoundly Euphemistic Ravisher of Linguistics