Regarding aesthetics of code lay out, about the only thing Larry
cares strongly about is that the closing curly brace of
a multi-line BLOCK should line up with the keyword that started the construct.
Beyond that, he has other preferences that aren't so strong:
Larry has his reasons for each of these things, but he doen't claim that everyone else's mind works the same as his does.
Here are some other more substantive style issues to think about:
open(FOO,$foo) || die "Can't open $foo: $!";is better than
die "Can't open $foo: $!" unless open(FOO,$foo);because the second way hides the main point of the statement in a modifier. On the other hand
print "Starting analysis\n" if $verbose;is better than
$verbose && print "Starting analysis\n";since the main point isn't whether the user typed -v or not.
Similarly, just because an operator lets you assume default arguments doesn't mean that you have to make use of the defaults. The defaults are there for lazy systems programmers writing one-shot programs. If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.
Along the same lines, just because you CAN omit parentheses in many places doesn't mean that you ought to:
return print reverse sort num values %array; return print(reverse(sort num (values(%array))));When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.
Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person
who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put
parens in the wrong place.
LINE: for (;;) { statements; last LINE if $foo; next LINE if /^#/; statements; }
$IDX = $ST_MTIME; $IDX = $ST_ATIME if $opt_u; $IDX = $ST_CTIME if $opt_c; $IDX = $ST_SIZE if $opt_s;
mkdir $tmpdir, 0700 or die "can't mkdir $tmpdir: $!"; chdir($tmpdir) or die "can't chdir $tmpdir: $!"; mkdir 'tmp', 0777 or die "can't mkdir $tmpdir/tmp: $!";
tr [abc] [xyz];