You must remember my audience. I was not writting a set of coding standards but explaining my thinking when writting coding standards. I agree completely that the statements I gave were not useful except to expert users but hay that is who I am talking too. We were discussing the merits of a particular standard that requires understanding of the origins of those standards. I feel very strongly that all too often people forget why software is written, it is written to perform a specific task. If the code performs that task then it is a success, if that task requires that the code be extensiable then cool as. The code must be written to be extensiable. If the code is for a one shot task then it does not. That is where the 'and no more so' come from.
I feel that perl exemplifies this idea. It has the capiabilities to allow for write once code that can be quickly written. It also allows for long term maintanable code to be written. As a programmer it is my job to strike a balance between the two.
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Zigster