Simply say that "to carp" is colloquial for "to nag, to bother, to warn, to complain." They'll get it.

It's not like other languages don't have double meanings and puns and homonyms too. For example, there is a kanji in Japanese for the word "woman." There is another kanji which is simply three copies of "woman" crammed into one character, which means "noisy" or "immoral." Go ahead, tell me that there's no ancient cultural significance to that linguistic choice.

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[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

For example, there is a kanji in Japanese for the word "woman." There is another kanji which is simply three copies of "woman" crammed into one character, which means "noisy" or "immoral."
Let's not forget the Kanji for 'trouble' is two women under one roof.

I don't think we need a regex to sense a pattern emerging here...



Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!

Someone once told me that in Chinese, the symbol for marriage is the symbol for a woman, next to the symbol for a man, with the man in a box.

No idea if it's apocryphal.

fishiest, anyway!

carp is the least "sexy" perl function for people who are not native (or assimilated) english speakers. It's kind of weird but I need to understand the "verb" to use it (and periodically I look at the meaning of carp in some online dictionnary). Result: yes I croak sometimes, but do not carp...

that could be a pool question, no? what is the most unused perl function? and that will be carp ;)

cheers --steph (who has lived for 7 years in Ann Arbor, MI and one year in Southampton, England) a carp is a silent fish...what kind of mnemonics is that for LOUD error printing, I wonder...

Start making your mouth go all rounded, like a fish mouth, while making "blah, blah, blah" noises...

Shutdown. You can confuse it with reboot (both are syscalls, but reboot is not a perl function, as it is highly system-dependent).

but that's the fault of the socket API isn't? but yes poorly chosen "verbs" should have at least decent aliases...like carp -> shout ;)

I never thought about it that way. I'm not a native English speaker, but I never bother to find out how it translates into my language. I just naturally see it, as the way I imagine it, croaking means spraying some curses before it dies considering the lines it throws. It's been one of my fave functions ever since I knew it and use it all the time for big programs despite hurting my eyes by looking at the error log when something goes bad.