Never said they didn’t, now did I?   Addressing a particular reply “very specifically” is great of course, for that person who is at that particular moment being addressed.   But any thread that is written on this forum is going to last for dozens of years, and every single bloke who encounters it in the future is not going to have “exactly this same problem.”   (And, they just might not want to wade through even a paragraph or two of “Perl code.”   Or, they might feel about my post exactly the same way you did.   Who knows?   Certainly not gonna self-censor the thread for worrying about such things.)

I just pointed out a few things that, well do I remember from the time, I didn’t know at the time, and as a consequence, spent more effort on than I really needed to.   I would have found my comment useful.   (Soapboxing a bit here ...)   The real value of Perl is the vast CPAN library that goes with it.   But “vast” means that there are a helluva lot of things in there that maybe you had no idea were there.   We all have had the experience of writing something from scratch not knowing that something better was at-hand, and maybe benefiting from just a little nudge in an unexpected direction.

I’m never commenting on anything to hear myself talk, and I have a Rhett Butler attitude about “XP.”   I have no idea who’s gonna find what useful, nor when nor why.   Just gonna do my best.