Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Welcome to the Monastery
 
PerlMonks  

Re: chomping constants

by Thilosophy (Curate)
on Mar 11, 2005 at 03:38 UTC ( [id://438522]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Should chomping a constant always raise an error?

In a language as dynamic as Perl, we cannot have a lot of compile-time checks, and I am always happy when it happens, as in this case. I commend the compiler for complaining!

Obviously, it doesn't make much sense to chomp a constant, but if your operating within a sub, you don't know what the user will pass you.

I do not quite understand this. Inside of a sub, when the user passes in some data, it would not be a constant, would it?

If the user passes a constant that doesn't need chomping it would be nice to allow that thtough without having to duplicate the tests inherent in chomp?

What exactly do you mean by constant? I take it to be something that is known at compile-time.

I think it would be nice if the compiler optimized away the chomp completely if called with a compile-time constant. But I am not sure this is a feature many people need.

Update: After reading [id://BigLug]'s response and his excellent examples, I now understand what you meant by "inside of a sub". In this case, I tend to agree with you, that the run-time error that occurs when you pass in a read-only 'fred' (which does not need to be modified) is a little harsh. On the other hand, the subroutine modify wants to modify its parameter and passing constants to it would be as illegal as passing them directly to chomp.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://438522]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others chanting in the Monastery: (3)
As of 2024-03-29 02:04 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found