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Revision 1.5 by root, Mon May 3 19:49:09 2010 UTC vs.
Revision 1.16 by root, Sat May 31 20:38:48 2014 UTC

1#! perl 1#! perl-000
2
3our $VERSION = '3.73';
2 4
3open STDOUT, ">$ARGV[0]~" 5open STDOUT, ">$ARGV[0]~"
4 or die "$ARGV[0]~: $!"; 6 or die "$ARGV[0]~: $!";
5 7
6our $WARN; 8our ($WARN, $H, %H);
7our $H; 9
10use utf8;
11use strict qw(subs vars);
12
13BEGIN {
14 if ($] >= 5.010) {
15 require feature;
16 feature->import (qw(say state switch));
17 }
18 if ($] >= 5.012) {
19 feature->import (qw(unicode_strings));
20 }
21 if ($] >= 5.016) {
22 feature->import (qw(current_sub fc evalbytes));
23 feature->unimport (qw(array_base));
24 }
25}
26
27no warnings;
28use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack malloc portable prototype
29 inplace io pipe unpack glob digit printf
30 layer reserved taint closure semicolon);
31no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
8 32
9BEGIN { 33BEGIN {
10 $H = $^H; 34 $H = $^H;
11 $WARN = ${^WARNING_BITS}; 35 $WARN = ${^WARNING_BITS};
12} 36 %H = %^H;
13
14use utf8;
15use strict qw(subs vars);
16
17no warnings;
18use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack malloc portable prototype
19 inplace io pipe unpack regexp deprecated exiting glob digit printf
20 layer reserved taint closure semicolon);
21no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
22
23BEGIN {
24 $H = $^H & ~$H;
25 $WARN = ${^WARNING_BITS} & ~$WARN;
26} 37}
27 38
28while (<DATA>) { 39while (<DATA>) {
29 if (/^IMPORT/) { 40 if (/^IMPORT/) {
30 print " # use warnings\n"; 41 print " # use warnings\n";
31 printf " \${^WARNING_BITS} ^= \${^WARNING_BITS} ^ \"%s\";\n", 42 printf " \${^WARNING_BITS} ^= \${^WARNING_BITS} ^ \"%s\";\n",
32 join "", map "\\x$_", unpack "(H2)*", $WARN; 43 join "", map "\\x$_", unpack "(H2)*", $WARN;
33 print " # use strict, use utf8;\n"; 44 print " # use strict, use utf8; use feature;\n";
34 printf " \$^H |= 0x%x;\n", $H; 45 printf " \$^H |= 0x%x;\n", $H;
46
47 if (my @features = grep /^feature_/, keys %H) {
48 print " \@^H{qw(@features)} = (1) x ", (scalar @features), ";\n";
49 }
50 } elsif (/^VERSION/) {
51 print "our \$VERSION = $VERSION;\n";
35 } else { 52 } else {
36 print; 53 print;
37 } 54 }
38} 55}
39 56
40close STDOUT; 57close STDOUT;
41rename "$ARGV[0]~", $ARGV[0]; 58rename "$ARGV[0]~", $ARGV[0];
42 59
43__DATA__ 60__DATA__
44
45=head1 NAME
46
47common::sense - save a tree AND a kitten, use common::sense!
48
49=head1 SYNOPSIS
50
51 use common::sense;
52
53 # supposed to be the same, with much lower memory usage, as:
54 #
55 # use utf8;
56 # use strict qw(vars subs);
57 # use feature qw(say state switch);
58 # no warnings;
59 # use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack malloc
60 # portable prototype inplace io pipe unpack regexp
61 # deprecated exiting glob digit printf layer
62 # reserved taint closure semicolon);
63 # no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
64
65
66=head1 DESCRIPTION
67
68 “Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks
69 he needs more of it than he already has.”
70
71 – René Descartes
72
73This module implements some sane defaults for Perl programs, as defined by
74two typical (or not so typical - use your common sense) specimens of Perl
75coders. In fact, after working out details on which warnings and strict
76modes to enable and make fatal, we found that we (and our code written so
77far, and others) fully agree on every option, even though we never used
78warnings before, so it seems this module indeed reflects a "common" sense
79among some long-time Perl coders.
80
81The basic philosophy behind the choices made in common::sense can be
82summarised as: "enforcing strict policies to catch as many bugs as
83possible, while at the same time, not limiting the expressive power
84available to the programmer".
85
86Two typical examples of how this philosophy is applied in practise is the
87handling of uninitialised and malloc warnings:
88
89=over 4
90
91=item I<uninitialised>
92
93C<undef> is a well-defined feature of perl, and enabling warnings for
94using it rarely catches any bugs, but considerably limits you in what you
95can do, so uninitialised warnings are disabled.
96
97=item I<malloc>
98
99Freeing something twice on the C level is a serious bug, usually causing
100memory corruption. It often leads to side effects much later in the
101program and there are no advantages to not reporting this, so malloc
102warnings are fatal by default.
103
104=back
105
106What follows is a more thorough discussion of what this module does,
107and why it does it, and what the advantages (and disadvantages) of this
108approach are.
109
110=head1 RATIONALE
111
112=over 4
113
114=item use utf8
115
116While it's not common sense to write your programs in UTF-8, it's quickly
117becoming the most common encoding, is the designated future default
118encoding for perl sources, and the most convenient encoding available
119(you can do really nice quoting tricks...). Experience has shown that our
120programs were either all pure ascii or utf-8, both of which will stay the
121same.
122
123There are few drawbacks to enabling UTF-8 source code by default (mainly
124some speed hits due to bugs in older versions of perl), so this module
125enables UTF-8 source code encoding by default.
126
127
128=item use strict qw(subs vars)
129
130Using C<use strict> is definitely common sense, but C<use strict
131'refs'> definitely overshoots its usefulness. After almost two
132decades of Perl hacking, we decided that it does more harm than being
133useful. Specifically, constructs like these:
134
135 @{ $var->[0] }
136
137Must be written like this (or similarly), when C<use strict 'refs'> is in
138scope, and C<$var> can legally be C<undef>:
139
140 @{ $var->[0] || [] }
141
142This is annoying, and doesn't shield against obvious mistakes such as
143using C<"">, so one would even have to write (at least for the time
144being):
145
146 @{ defined $var->[0] ? $var->[0] : [] }
147
148... which nobody with a bit of common sense would consider
149writing: clear code is clearly something else.
150
151Curiously enough, sometimes perl is not so strict, as this works even with
152C<use strict> in scope:
153
154 for (@{ $var->[0] }) { ...
155
156If that isn't hypocrisy! And all that from a mere program!
157
158
159=item use feature qw(say state given)
160
161We found it annoying that we always have to enable extra features. If
162something breaks because it didn't anticipate future changes, so be
163it. 5.10 broke almost all our XS modules and nobody cared either (or at
164least I know of nobody who really complained about gratuitous changes -
165as opposed to bugs).
166
167Few modules that are not actively maintained work with newer versions of
168Perl, regardless of use feature or not, so a new major perl release means
169changes to many modules - new keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.
170
171If your code isn't alive, it's dead, Jim - be an active maintainer.
172
173But nobody forces you to use those extra features in modules meant for
174older versions of perl - common::sense of course works there as well.
175There is also an important other mode where having additional features by
176default is useful: commandline hacks and internal use scripts: See "much
177reduced typing", below.
178
179
180=item no warnings, but a lot of new errors
181
182Ah, the dreaded warnings. Even worse, the horribly dreaded C<-w>
183switch: Even though we don't care if other people use warnings (and
184certainly there are useful ones), a lot of warnings simply go against the
185spirit of Perl.
186
187Most prominently, the warnings related to C<undef>. There is nothing wrong
188with C<undef>: it has well-defined semantics, it is useful, and spitting
189out warnings you never asked for is just evil.
190
191The result was that every one of our modules did C<no warnings> in the
192past, to avoid somebody accidentally using and forcing his bad standards
193on our code. Of course, this switched off all warnings, even the useful
194ones. Not a good situation. Really, the C<-w> switch should only enable
195warnings for the main program only.
196
197Funnily enough, L<perllexwarn> explicitly mentions C<-w> (and not in a
198favourable way, calling it outright "wrong"), but standard utilities, such
199as L<prove>, or MakeMaker when running C<make test>, still enable them
200blindly.
201
202For version 2 of common::sense, we finally sat down a few hours and went
203through I<every single warning message>, identifiying - according to
204common sense - all the useful ones.
205
206This resulted in the rather impressive list in the SYNOPSIS. When we
207weren't sure, we didn't include the warning, so the list might grow in
208the future (we might have made a mistake, too, so the list might shrink
209as well).
210
211Note the presence of C<FATAL> in the list: we do not think that the
212conditions caught by these warnings are worthy of a warning, we I<insist>
213that they are worthy of I<stopping> your program, I<instantly>. They are
214I<bugs>!
215
216Therefore we consider C<common::sense> to be much stricter than C<use
217warnings>, which is good if you are into strict things (we are not,
218actually, but these things tend to be subjective).
219
220After deciding on the list, we ran the module against all of our code that
221uses C<common::sense> (that is almost all of our code), and found only one
222occurence where one of them caused a problem: one of elmex's (unreleased)
223modules contained:
224
225 $fmt =~ s/([^\s\[]*)\[( [^\]]* )\]/\x0$1\x1$2\x0/xgo;
226
227We quickly agreed that indeed the code should be changed, even though it
228happened to do the right thing when the warning was switched off.
229
230
231=item much reduced typing
232
233Especially with version 2.0 of common::sense, the amount of boilerplate
234code you need to add to gte I<this> policy is daunting. Nobody would write
235this out in throwaway scripts, commandline hacks or in quick internal-use
236scripts.
237
238By using common::sense you get a defined set of policies (ours, but maybe
239yours, too, if you accept them), and they are easy to apply to your
240scripts: typing C<use common::sense;> is even shorter than C<use warnings;
241use strict; use feature ...>.
242
243And you can immediately use the features of your installed perl, which
244is more difficult in code you release, but not usually an issue for
245internal-use code (downgrades of your production perl should be rare,
246right?).
247
248
249=item mucho reduced memory usage
250
251Just using all those pragmas mentioned in the SYNOPSIS together wastes
252<blink>I<< B<776> kilobytes >></blink> of precious memory in my perl, for
253I<every single perl process using our code>, which on our machines, is a
254lot. In comparison, this module only uses I<< B<four> >> kilobytes (I even
255had to write it out so it looks like more) of memory on the same platform.
256
257The money/time/effort/electricity invested in these gigabytes (probably
258petabytes globally!) of wasted memory could easily save 42 trees, and a
259kitten!
260
261Unfortunately, until everybods applies more common sense, there will still
262often be modules that pull in the monster pragmas. But one can hope...
263
264=cut
265
266package common::sense; 61package common::sense;
267 62
268our $VERSION = '3.2'; 63VERSION
269 64
270# overload should be included 65# overload should be included
271 66
272sub import { 67sub import {
68 local $^W; # work around perl 5.16 spewing out warnings for next statement
273IMPORT 69IMPORT
274 # use feature
275 $^H{feature_switch} =
276 $^H{feature_say} =
277 $^H{feature_state} = 1;
278} 70}
279 71
2801; 721
281
282=back
283
284=head1 THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!
285
286This module doesn't offer an unimport. First of all, it wastes even more
287memory, second, and more importantly, who with even a bit of common sense
288would want no common sense?
289
290=head1 STABILITY AND FUTURE VERSIONS
291
292Future versions might change just about everything in this module. We
293might test our modules and upload new ones working with newer versions of
294this module, and leave you standing in the rain because we didn't tell
295you. In fact, we did so when switching from 1.0 to 2.0, which enabled gobs
296of warnings, and made them FATAL on top.
297
298Maybe we will load some nifty modules that try to emulate C<say> or so
299with perls older than 5.10 (this module, of course, should work with older
300perl versions - supporting 5.8 for example is just common sense at this
301time. Maybe not in the future, but of course you can trust our common
302sense to be consistent with, uhm, our opinion).
303
304=head1 WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS MODULE
305
306apeiron
307
308 "... wow"
309 "I hope common::sense is a joke."
310
311crab
312
313 "i wonder how it would be if joerg schilling wrote perl modules."
314
315Adam Kennedy
316
317 "Very interesting, efficient, and potentially something I'd use all the time."
318 [...]
319 "So no common::sense for me, alas."
320
321H.Merijn Brand
322
323 "Just one more reason to drop JSON::XS from my distribution list"
324
325Pista Palo
326
327 "Something in short supply these days..."
328
329Steffen Schwigon
330
331 "This module is quite for sure *not* just a repetition of all the other
332 'use strict, use warnings'-approaches, and it's also not the opposite.
333 [...] And for its chosen middle-way it's also not the worst name ever.
334 And everything is documented."
335
336BKB
337
338 "[Deleted - thanks to Steffen Schwigon for pointing out this review was
339 in error.]"
340
341Somni
342
343 "the arrogance of the guy"
344 "I swear he tacked somenoe else's name onto the module
345 just so he could use the royal 'we' in the documentation"
346
347Anonymous Monk
348
349 "You just gotta love this thing, its got META.json!!!"
350
351dngor
352
353 "Heh. '"<elmex at ta-sa.org>"' The quotes are semantic
354 distancing from that e-mail address."
355
356Jerad Pierce
357
358 "Awful name (not a proper pragma), and the SYNOPSIS doesn't tell you
359 anything either. Nor is it clear what features have to do with "common
360 sense" or discipline."
361
362acme
363
364 "THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!"
365
366apeiron (meta-comment about us commenting^Wquoting his comment)
367
368 "How about quoting this: get a clue, you fucktarded amoeba."
369
370quanth
371
372 "common sense is beautiful, json::xs is fast, Anyevent, EV are fast and
373 furious. I love mlehmannware ;)"
374
375apeiron
376
377 "... it's mlehmann's view of what common sense is. His view of common
378 sense is certainly uncommon, insofar as anyone with a clue disagrees
379 with him."
380
381apeiron (another meta-comment)
382
383 "apeiron wonders if his little informant is here to steal more quotes"
384
385ew73
386
387 "... I never got past the SYNOPSIS before calling it shit."
388 [...]
389 How come no one ever quotes me. :("
390
391=head1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
392
393Or frequently-come-up confusions.
394
395=over 4
396
397=item Is this module meant to be serious?
398
399Yes, we would have put it under the C<Acme::> namespace otherwise.
400
401=item But the manpage is written in a funny/stupid/... way?
402
403This was meant to make it clear that our common sense is a subjective
404thing and other people can use their own notions, taking the steam out
405of anybody who might be offended (as some people are always offended no
406matter what you do).
407
408This was a failure.
409
410But we hope the manpage still is somewhat entertaining even though it
411explains boring rationale.
412
413=item Why do you impose your conventions on my code?
414
415For some reason people keep thinking that C<common::sense> imposes
416process-wide limits, even though the SYNOPSIS makes it clear that it works
417like other similar modules - i.e. only within the scope that C<use>s them.
418
419So, no, we don't - nobody is forced to use this module, and using a module
420that relies on common::sense does not impose anything on you.
421
422=item Why do you think only your notion of common::sense is valid?
423
424Well, we don't, and have clearly written this in the documentation to
425every single release. We were just faster than anybody else w.r.t. to
426grabbing the namespace.
427
428=item But everybody knows that you have to use strict and use warnings,
429why do you disable them?
430
431Well, we don't do this either - we selectively disagree with the
432usefulness of some warnings over others. This module is aimed at
433experienced Perl programmers, not people migrating from other languages
434who might be surprised about stuff such as C<undef>. On the other hand,
435this does not exclude the usefulness of this module for total newbies, due
436to its strictness in enforcing policy, while at the same time not limiting
437the expresive power of perl.
438
439This module is considerably I<more> strict than the canonical C<use
440strict; use warnings>, as it makes all its warnings fatal in nature, so
441you can not get away with as many things as with the canonical approach.
442
443This was not implemented in version 1.0 because of the daunting number
444of warning categories and the difficulty in getting exactly the set of
445warnings you wish (i.e. look at the SYNOPSIS in how complicated it is to
446get a specific set of warnings - it is not reasonable to put this into
447every module, the maintenance effort would be enourmous).
448
449=item But many modules C<use strict> or C<use warnings>, so the memory
450savings do not apply?
451
452I suddenly feel sad...
453
454But yes, that's true. Fortunately C<common::sense> still uses only a
455miniscule amount of RAM.
456
457=item But it adds another dependency to your modules!
458
459It's a fact, yeah. But it's trivial to install, most popular modules have
460many more dependencies and we consider dependencies a good thing - it
461leads to better APIs, more thought about interworking of modules and so
462on.
463
464=item Why do you use JSON and not YAML for your META.yml?
465
466This is not true - YAML supports a large subset of JSON, and this subset
467is what META.yml is written in, so it would be correct to say "the
468META.yml is written in a common subset of YAML and JSON".
469
470The META.yml follows the YAML, JSON and META.yml specifications, and is
471correctly parsed by CPAN, so if you have trouble with it, the problem is
472likely on your side.
473
474=item But! But!
475
476Yeah, we know.
477
478=back
479
480=head1 AUTHOR
481
482 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
483 http://home.schmorp.de/
484
485 Robin Redeker, "<elmex at ta-sa.org>".
486
487=cut
488

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