Uri said:
when you have been coding for 30 years and don't see any need to head
off bad coding advice, then i will listen to you and calm down. many of
the world's problems are from bad coding (or bad people in general).
It's too bad that you don't know the key phrase of Perl which is
"there is more than one way to do it".
I prefaced my comment with "this is not the advised way to do it" which
I am sure that was understood by Derek.
What is annoying is when people proclaim to have perfect sight with
regard to being the judge of what is and is not good code.
The truth is, someone is going to think your code is "bad" no matter
what you do with it. They might even just make this assessment based
on the fact that you might choose to code in Perl over some other
language.
We should all be engaged with programming because we find it fun.
There will always be bad code, and you shouldn't think that you are
impervious to doing so. Programming is about learning how to overcome
the next challenge that is thrown at you whether it be because of a
poor implementation or a ground up difficult project. Perl is no
exception on that matter. The key differences I find that make Perl
worth coding in ( i.e. the reason I find Perl the most fun language )
are a. there IS more than one way to do it and b. sometimes its cool
to find out that a wierd little thing you dreamed up *actually* works.
( Who would have honestly thought something like @hash{keys
%otherhash} would work ? )
The fact that people are so quick to crush creativity is quite
obnoxious and is antithetical to the main message of Perl.
So , I think it is the duty of experienced programmers to give advice
to new comers yet not quash their desire to explore the beautiful
eccentricities of the language.