common-sense/sense.pm

=head1 NAME

common::sense - save a tree AND a kitten, use common::sense!

=head1 SYNOPSIS

 use common::sense;

 # supposed to be the same, with much lower memory usage, as:
 #
 # use utf8;
 # use strict qw(vars subs);
 # use feature qw(say state switch);
 # no warnings;
 # use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack substr malloc
 #                 portable prototype inplace io pipe unpack regexp
 #                 deprecated exiting glob digit printf layer
 #                 reserved parenthesis taint closure semicolon);
 # no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This module implements some sane defaults for Perl programs, as defined by
two typical (or not so typical - use your common sense) specimens of Perl
coders. In fact, after working out details on which warnings and strict
modes to enable and make fatal, we found that we (and our code written so
far, and others) fully agree on every option, even though we never used
warnings before, so it seems this module indeed reflects a "common" sense
among some long-time Perl coders.

The basic philosophy behind the choices made in common::sense can be
summarised as: "enforcing strict policies to catch as many bugs as
possible, while at the same time, not limiting the expressive power
available to the programmer".

Two typical examples of this philosophy are uninitialised and malloc
warnings:

C<undef> is a well-defined feature of perl, and enabling warnings for
using it rarely catches any bugs, but considerably limits you in what you
can do, so uninitialised warnings are disabled.

Freeing something twice on the C level is a serious bug, usually causing
memory corruption. It often leads to side effects much later in the
program and there are no advantages to not reporting this, so malloc
warnings are fatal by default.

What follows is a more thorough discussion of what this module does,
and why it does it, and what the advantages (and disadvantages) of this
approach are.

=over 4

=item use utf8

While it's not common sense to write your programs in UTF-8, it's quickly
becoming the most common encoding, is the designated future default
encoding for perl sources, and the most convenient encoding available
(you can do really nice quoting tricks...). Experience has shown that our
programs were either all pure ascii or utf-8, both of which will stay the
same.

There are few drawbacks to enabling UTF-8 source code by default (mainly
some speed hits due to bugs in older versions of perl), so this module
enables UTF-8 source code encoding by default.

=item use strict qw(subs vars)

Using C<use strict> is definitely common sense, but C<use strict
'refs'> definitely overshoots its usefulness. After almost two
decades of Perl hacking, we decided that it does more harm than being
useful. Specifically, constructs like these:

   @{ $var->[0] }

Must be written like this (or similarly), when C<use strict 'refs'> is in
scope, and C<$var> can legally be C<undef>:

   @{ $var->[0] || [] }

This is annoying, and doesn't shield against obvious mistakes such as
using C<"">, so one would even have to write (at least for the time
being):

   @{ defined $var->[0] ? $var->[0] : [] }

... which nobody with a bit of common sense would consider
writing: clear code is clearly something else.

Curiously enough, sometimes perl is not so strict, as this works even with
C<use strict> in scope:

   for (@{ $var->[0] }) { ...

If that isn't hypocrisy! And all that from a mere program!


=item use feature qw(say state given)

We found it annoying that we always have to enable extra features. If
something breaks because it didn't anticipate future changes, so be
it. 5.10 broke almost all our XS modules and nobody cared either (or at
least I know of nobody who really complained about gratuitous changes -
as opposed to bugs).

Few modules that are not actively maintained work with newer versions of
Perl, regardless of use feature or not, so a new major perl release means
changes to many modules - new keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.

If your code isn't alive, it's dead, Jim - be an active maintainer.

But nobody forces you to use those extra features in modules meant for
older versions of perl - common::sense of course works there as well.
There is also an important other mode where having additional features by
default is useful: commandline hacks and internal use scripts: See "much
reduced typing", below.


=item no warnings, but a lot of new errors

Ah, the dreaded warnings. Even worse, the horribly dreaded C<-w>
switch: Even though we don't care if other people use warnings (and
certainly there are useful ones), a lot of warnings simply go against the
spirit of Perl.

Most prominently, the warnings related to C<undef>. There is nothing wrong
with C<undef>: it has well-defined semantics, it is useful, and spitting
out warnings you never asked for is just evil.

The result was that every one of our modules did C<no warnings> in the
past, to avoid somebody accidentally using and forcing his bad standards
on our code. Of course, this switched off all warnings, even the useful
ones. Not a good situation. Really, the C<-w> switch should only enable
warnings for the main program only.

Funnily enough, L<perllexwarn> explicitly mentions C<-w> (and not in a
favourable way, calling it outright "wrong"), but standard utilities, such
as L<prove>, or MakeMaker when running C<make test>, still enable them
blindly.

For version 2 of common::sense, we finally sat down a few hours and went
through I<every single warning message>, identifiying - according to
common sense - all the useful ones.

This resulted in the rather impressive list in the SYNOPSIS. When we
weren't sure, we didn't include the warning, so the list might grow in
the future (we might have made a mistake, too, so the list might shrink
as well).

Note the presence of C<FATAL> in the list: we do not think that the
conditions caught by these warnings are worthy of a warning, we I<insist>
that they are worthy of I<stopping> your program, I<instantly>. They are
I<bugs>!

Therefore we consider C<common::sense> to be much stricter than C<use
warnings>, which is good if you are into strict things (we are not,
actually, but these things tend to be subjective).

After deciding on the list, we ran the module against all of our code that
uses C<common::sense> (that is almost all of our code), and found only one
occurence where one of them caused a problem: one of elmex's (unreleased)
modules contained:

   $fmt =~ s/([^\s\[]*)\[( [^\]]* )\]/\x0$1\x1$2\x0/xgo;

We quickly agreed that indeed the code should be changed, even though it
happened to do the right thing when the warning was switched off.


=item much reduced typing

Especially with version 2.0 of common::sense, the amount of boilerplate
code you need to add to gte I<this> policy is daunting. Nobody would write
this out in throwaway scripts, commandline hacks or in quick internal-use
scripts.

By using common::sense you get a defined set of policies (ours, but maybe
yours, too, if you accept them), and they are easy to apply to your
scripts: typing C<use common::sense;> is even shorter than C<use warnings;
use strict; use feature ...>.

And you can immediately use the features of your installed perl, which
is more difficult in code you release, but not usually an issue for
internal-use code (downgrades of your production perl should be rare,
right?).


=item mucho reduced memory usage

Just using all those pragmas mentioned in the SYNOPSIS together wastes
<blink>I<< B<776> kilobytes >></blink> of precious memory in my perl, for
I<every single perl process using our code>, which on our machines, is a
lot. In comparison, this module only uses I<< B<four> >> kilobytes (I even
had to write it out so it looks like more) of memory on the same platform.

The money/time/effort/electricity invested in these gigabytes (probably
petabytes globally!) of wasted memory could easily save 42 trees, and a
kitten!

Unfortunately, until everybods applies more common sense, there will still
often be modules that pull in the monster pragmas. But one can hope...

=cut

package common::sense;

our $VERSION = '3.0';

# paste this into perl to find bitmask

# no warnings;
# use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack substr malloc portable prototype
#                 inplace io pipe unpack regexp deprecated exiting glob digit printf
#                 layer reserved parenthesis taint closure semicolon);
# no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
# BEGIN { warn join "", map "\\x$_", unpack "(H2)*", ${^WARNING_BITS}; exit 0 };

# overload should be included

sub import {
   # verified with perl 5.8.0, 5.10.0
   ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\xfc\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf3\xcf\xc0\xf3\xfc\x33\x00";

   # use utf8, strict vars subs
   $^H |= 0x00800600;

   # use feature
   $^H{feature_switch} =
   $^H{feature_say}    =
   $^H{feature_state}  = 1;
}

1;

=back

=head1 THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!

This module doesn't offer an unimport. First of all, it wastes even more
memory, second, and more importantly, who with even a bit of common sense
would want no common sense?

=head1 STABILITY AND FUTURE VERSIONS

Future versions might change just about everything in this module. We
might test our modules and upload new ones working with newer versions of
this module, and leave you standing in the rain because we didn't tell
you. In fact, we did so when switching from 1.0 to 2.0, which enabled gobs
of warnings, and made them FATAL on top.

Maybe we will load some nifty modules that try to emulate C<say> or so
with perls older than 5.10 (this module, of course, should work with older
perl versions - supporting 5.8 for example is just common sense at this
time. Maybe not in the future, but of course you can trust our common
sense to be consistent with, uhm, our opinion).

=head1 WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS MODULE

apeiron

   "... wow"
   "I hope common::sense is a joke."

crab

   "i wonder how it would be if joerg schilling wrote perl modules."

Adam Kennedy

   "Very interesting, efficient, and potentially something I'd use all the time."
   [...]
   "So no common::sense for me, alas."

H.Merijn Brand

   "Just one more reason to drop JSON::XS from my distribution list"

Pista Palo

   "Something in short supply these days..."

Steffen Schwigon

   "This module is quite for sure *not* just a repetition of all the other
   'use strict, use warnings'-approaches, and it's also not the opposite.
   [...] And for its chosen middle-way it's also not the worst name ever.
   And everything is documented."

BKB

   "[Deleted - thanks to Steffen Schwigon for pointing out this review was
   in error.]"

Somni

   "the arrogance of the guy"
   "I swear he tacked somenoe else's name onto the module
   just so he could use the royal 'we' in the documentation"

Anonymous Monk

   "You just gotta love this thing, its got META.json!!!"

dngor

   "Heh.  '"<elmex at ta-sa.org>"'  The quotes are semantic
   distancing from that e-mail address."

Jerad Pierce

   "Awful name (not a proper pragma), and the SYNOPSIS doesn't tell you
   anything either. Nor is it clear what features have to do with "common
   sense" or discipline."

acme

   "THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!"

apeiron (meta-comment about us commenting^Wquoting his comment)

   "How about quoting this: get a clue, you fucktarded amoeba."

quanth

   "common sense is beautiful, json::xs is fast, Anyevent, EV are fast and
   furious. I love mlehmannware ;)"

apeiron (another meta-comment)

   "apeiron wonders if his little informant is here to steal more quotes"

ew73

   "... I never got past the SYNOPSIS before calling it shit."

=head1 FREQUQNTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Or frequently-come-up confusions.

=over 4

=item Is this module meant to be serious?

Yes, we would have put it under the C<Acme::> namespace otherwise.

=item But the manpage is written in a funny/stupid/... way?

This was meant to make it clear that our common sense is a subjective
thing and other people can use their own notions, taking the steam out
of anybody who might be offended (as some people are always offended no
matter what you do).

This was a failure.

But we hope the manpage still is somewhat entertaining even though it
explains boring rationale.

=item Why do you impose your conventions on my code?

For some reason people keep thinking that C<common::sense> imposes
process-wide limits, even though the SYNOPSIS makes it clear that it works
like other similar modules - only on the scope that uses them.

So, no, we don't - nobody is forced to use this module, and using a module
that relies on common::sense does not impose anything on you.

=item Why do you think only your notion of common::sense is valid?

Well, we don't, and have clearly written this in the documentation to
every single release. We were just faster than anybody else w.r.t. to
grabbing the namespace.

=item But everybody knows that you have to use strict and use warnings,
why do you disable them?

Well, we don't do this either - we selectively disagree with the
usefulness of some warnings over others. This module is aimed at
experienced Perl programmers, not people migrating from other languages
who might be surprised about stuff such as C<undef>. On the other hand,
this does not exclude the usefulness of this module for total newbies, due
to its strictness in enforcing policy, while at the same time not limiting
the expresive power of perl.

This module is considerably I<more> strict than the canonical C<use
strict; use warnings>, as it makes all its warnings fatal in nature, so
you can not get away with as many things as with the canonical approach.

This was not implemented in version 1.0 because of the daunting number
of warning categories and the difficulty in getting exactly the set of
warnings you wish (i.e. look at the SYNOPSIS in how complicated it is to
get a specific set of warnings - it is not reasonable to put this into
every module, the maintainance effort would be enourmous).

=item But many modules C<use strict> or C<use warnings>, so the memory
savings do not apply?

I am suddenly so sad.

But yes, that's true. Fortunately C<common::sense> still uses only a
miniscule amount of RAM.

=item But it adds another dependency to your modules!

It's a fact, yeah. But it's trivial to install, most popular modules have
many more dependencies and we consider dependencies a good thing - it
leads to better APIs, more thought about interworking of modules and so
on.

=item Why do you use JSON and not YAML for your META.yml?

This is not true - YAML supports a large subset of JSON, and this subset
is what META.yml is written in, so it would be correct to say "the
META.yml is written in a common subset of YAML and JSON".

The META.yml follows the YAML, JSON and META.yml specifications, and is
correctly parsed by CPAN, so if you have trouble with it, the problem is
likely on your side.

=item But! But!

Yeah, we know.

=back

=head1 AUTHOR

 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
 http://home.schmorp.de/

 Robin Redeker, "<elmex at ta-sa.org>".

=cut

Revision:	1.27
Committed:	Mon Dec 21 08:59:32 2009 UTC (14 years, 4 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.26:	+8 -0 lines
Log Message:	* empty log message *
#	User	Rev	Content
1	root	1.1	=head1 NAME
2
3			common::sense - save a tree AND a kitten, use common::sense!
4
5			=head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7			use common::sense;
8
9	root	1.19	# supposed to be the same, with much lower memory usage, as:
10	root	1.1	#
11	root	1.25	# use utf8;
12	root	1.1	# use strict qw(vars subs);
13			# use feature qw(say state switch);
14			# no warnings;
15	root	1.15	# use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack substr malloc
16	root	1.24	# portable prototype inplace io pipe unpack regexp
17	root	1.25	# deprecated exiting glob digit printf layer
18	root	1.15	# reserved parenthesis taint closure semicolon);
19	root	1.24	# no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
20	root	1.1
21			=head1 DESCRIPTION
22
23			This module implements some sane defaults for Perl programs, as defined by
24	root	1.16	two typical (or not so typical - use your common sense) specimens of Perl
25	root	1.21	coders. In fact, after working out details on which warnings and strict
26			modes to enable and make fatal, we found that we (and our code written so
27			far, and others) fully agree on every option, even though we never used
28			warnings before, so it seems this module indeed reflects a "common" sense
29			among some long-time Perl coders.
30	root	1.1
31	root	1.22	The basic philosophy behind the choices made in common::sense can be
32			summarised as: "enforcing strict policies to catch as many bugs as
33			possible, while at the same time, not limiting the expressive power
34			available to the programmer".
35
36			Two typical examples of this philosophy are uninitialised and malloc
37			warnings:
38
39			C<undef> is a well-defined feature of perl, and enabling warnings for
40			using it rarely catches any bugs, but considerably limits you in what you
41			can do, so uninitialised warnings are disabled.
42
43			Freeing something twice on the C level is a serious bug, usually causing
44			memory corruption. It often leads to side effects much later in the
45			program and there are no advantages to not reporting this, so malloc
46			warnings are fatal by default.
47
48			What follows is a more thorough discussion of what this module does,
49			and why it does it, and what the advantages (and disadvantages) of this
50			approach are.
51
52	root	1.1	=over 4
53
54	root	1.25	=item use utf8
55
56			While it's not common sense to write your programs in UTF-8, it's quickly
57	root	1.26	becoming the most common encoding, is the designated future default
58			encoding for perl sources, and the most convenient encoding available
59			(you can do really nice quoting tricks...). Experience has shown that our
60			programs were either all pure ascii or utf-8, both of which will stay the
61			same.
62	root	1.25
63			There are few drawbacks to enabling UTF-8 source code by default (mainly
64			some speed hits due to bugs in older versions of perl), so this module
65			enables UTF-8 source code encoding by default.
66
67	root	1.1	=item use strict qw(subs vars)
68
69			Using C<use strict> is definitely common sense, but C<use strict
70	root	1.11	'refs'> definitely overshoots its usefulness. After almost two
71	root	1.1	decades of Perl hacking, we decided that it does more harm than being
72			useful. Specifically, constructs like these:
73
74			@{ $var->[0] }
75
76	root	1.4	Must be written like this (or similarly), when C<use strict 'refs'> is in
77			scope, and C<$var> can legally be C<undef>:
78	root	1.1
79			@{ $var->[0] \|\| [] }
80
81			This is annoying, and doesn't shield against obvious mistakes such as
82	root	1.11	using C<"">, so one would even have to write (at least for the time
83			being):
84	root	1.1
85	root	1.18	@{ defined $var->[0] ? $var->[0] : [] }
86	root	1.1
87			... which nobody with a bit of common sense would consider
88	root	1.18	writing: clear code is clearly something else.
89	root	1.11
90			Curiously enough, sometimes perl is not so strict, as this works even with
91			C<use strict> in scope:
92	root	1.1
93			for (@{ $var->[0] }) { ...
94
95	root	1.15	If that isn't hypocrisy! And all that from a mere program!
96
97	root	1.1
98			=item use feature qw(say state given)
99
100			We found it annoying that we always have to enable extra features. If
101			something breaks because it didn't anticipate future changes, so be
102	root	1.11	it. 5.10 broke almost all our XS modules and nobody cared either (or at
103	root	1.15	least I know of nobody who really complained about gratuitous changes -
104			as opposed to bugs).
105	root	1.11
106			Few modules that are not actively maintained work with newer versions of
107			Perl, regardless of use feature or not, so a new major perl release means
108			changes to many modules - new keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.
109
110	root	1.15	If your code isn't alive, it's dead, Jim - be an active maintainer.
111
112	root	1.22	But nobody forces you to use those extra features in modules meant for
113			older versions of perl - common::sense of course works there as well.
114			There is also an important other mode where having additional features by
115			default is useful: commandline hacks and internal use scripts: See "much
116			reduced typing", below.
117
118	root	1.15
119	root	1.16	=item no warnings, but a lot of new errors
120	root	1.15
121			Ah, the dreaded warnings. Even worse, the horribly dreaded C<-w>
122			switch: Even though we don't care if other people use warnings (and
123			certainly there are useful ones), a lot of warnings simply go against the
124			spirit of Perl.
125
126			Most prominently, the warnings related to C<undef>. There is nothing wrong
127			with C<undef>: it has well-defined semantics, it is useful, and spitting
128			out warnings you never asked for is just evil.
129
130	root	1.16	The result was that every one of our modules did C<no warnings> in the
131			past, to avoid somebody accidentally using and forcing his bad standards
132			on our code. Of course, this switched off all warnings, even the useful
133			ones. Not a good situation. Really, the C<-w> switch should only enable
134			warnings for the main program only.
135	root	1.15
136			Funnily enough, L<perllexwarn> explicitly mentions C<-w> (and not in a
137			favourable way, calling it outright "wrong"), but standard utilities, such
138			as L<prove>, or MakeMaker when running C<make test>, still enable them
139			blindly.
140
141	root	1.16	For version 2 of common::sense, we finally sat down a few hours and went
142			through I<every single warning message>, identifiying - according to
143			common sense - all the useful ones.
144	root	1.15
145			This resulted in the rather impressive list in the SYNOPSIS. When we
146			weren't sure, we didn't include the warning, so the list might grow in
147			the future (we might have made a mistake, too, so the list might shrink
148	root	1.16	as well).
149	root	1.15
150			Note the presence of C<FATAL> in the list: we do not think that the
151			conditions caught by these warnings are worthy of a warning, we I<insist>
152	root	1.16	that they are worthy of I<stopping> your program, I<instantly>. They are
153			I<bugs>!
154	root	1.15
155			Therefore we consider C<common::sense> to be much stricter than C<use
156			warnings>, which is good if you are into strict things (we are not,
157			actually, but these things tend to be subjective).
158
159			After deciding on the list, we ran the module against all of our code that
160			uses C<common::sense> (that is almost all of our code), and found only one
161			occurence where one of them caused a problem: one of elmex's (unreleased)
162			modules contained:
163
164			$fmt =~ s/([^\s\[])\[( [^\]] )\]/\x0$1\x1$2\x0/xgo;
165
166			We quickly agreed that indeed the code should be changed, even though it
167			happened to do the right thing when the warning was switched off.
168
169	root	1.11
170	root	1.22	=item much reduced typing
171
172			Especially with version 2.0 of common::sense, the amount of boilerplate
173			code you need to add to gte I<this> policy is daunting. Nobody would write
174			this out in throwaway scripts, commandline hacks or in quick internal-use
175			scripts.
176
177			By using common::sense you get a defined set of policies (ours, but maybe
178			yours, too, if you accept them), and they are easy to apply to your
179			scripts: typing C<use common::sense;> is even shorter than C<use warnings;
180			use strict; use feature ...>.
181
182			And you can immediately use the features of your installed perl, which
183			is more difficult in code you release, but not usually an issue for
184			internal-use code (downgrades of your production perl should be rare,
185			right?).
186
187
188	root	1.11	=item mucho reduced memory usage
189
190			Just using all those pragmas mentioned in the SYNOPSIS together wastes
191			<blink>I<< B<776> kilobytes >></blink> of precious memory in my perl, for
192			I<every single perl process using our code>, which on our machines, is a
193			lot. In comparison, this module only uses I<< B<four> >> kilobytes (I even
194			had to write it out so it looks like more) of memory on the same platform.
195	root	1.1
196			The money/time/effort/electricity invested in these gigabytes (probably
197			petabytes globally!) of wasted memory could easily save 42 trees, and a
198			kitten!
199
200	root	1.11	Unfortunately, until everybods applies more common sense, there will still
201			often be modules that pull in the monster pragmas. But one can hope...
202
203	root	1.1	=cut
204
205	root	1.2	package common::sense;
206	root	1.1
207	root	1.25	our $VERSION = '3.0';
208	root	1.15
209	root	1.19	# paste this into perl to find bitmask
210	root	1.1
211	root	1.13	# no warnings;
212	root	1.24	# use warnings qw(FATAL closed threads internal debugging pack substr malloc portable prototype
213	root	1.16	# inplace io pipe unpack regexp deprecated exiting glob digit printf
214	root	1.25	# layer reserved parenthesis taint closure semicolon);
215	root	1.24	# no warnings qw(exec newline unopened);
216	root	1.14	# BEGIN { warn join "", map "\\x$_", unpack "(H2)*", ${^WARNING_BITS}; exit 0 };
217	root	1.13
218			# overload should be included
219
220	root	1.2	sub import {
221	root	1.13	# verified with perl 5.8.0, 5.10.0
222	root	1.25	${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\xfc\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf3\xcf\xc0\xf3\xfc\x33\x00";
223	root	1.3
224	root	1.25	# use utf8, strict vars subs
225			$^H \|= 0x00800600;
226	root	1.3
227			# use feature
228			$^H{feature_switch} =
229			$^H{feature_say} =
230			$^H{feature_state} = 1;
231	root	1.1	}
232
233			1;
234
235			=back
236
237	root	1.5	=head1 THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!
238	root	1.4
239			This module doesn't offer an unimport. First of all, it wastes even more
240			memory, second, and more importantly, who with even a bit of common sense
241			would want no common sense?
242
243	root	1.5	=head1 STABILITY AND FUTURE VERSIONS
244
245			Future versions might change just about everything in this module. We
246			might test our modules and upload new ones working with newer versions of
247			this module, and leave you standing in the rain because we didn't tell
248	root	1.15	you. In fact, we did so when switching from 1.0 to 2.0, which enabled gobs
249			of warnings, and made them FATAL on top.
250	root	1.5
251	root	1.15	Maybe we will load some nifty modules that try to emulate C<say> or so
252			with perls older than 5.10 (this module, of course, should work with older
253			perl versions - supporting 5.8 for example is just common sense at this
254			time. Maybe not in the future, but of course you can trust our common
255			sense to be consistent with, uhm, our opinion).
256	root	1.11
257			=head1 WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD TO SAY ABOUT THIS MODULE
258
259			apeiron
260
261			"... wow"
262			"I hope common::sense is a joke."
263
264			crab
265	root	1.5
266	root	1.11	"i wonder how it would be if joerg schilling wrote perl modules."
267	root	1.7
268	root	1.17	Adam Kennedy
269
270			"Very interesting, efficient, and potentially something I'd use all the time."
271			[...]
272			"So no common::sense for me, alas."
273
274	root	1.11	H.Merijn Brand
275
276			"Just one more reason to drop JSON::XS from my distribution list"
277	root	1.7
278			Pista Palo
279
280			"Something in short supply these days..."
281
282			Steffen Schwigon
283
284			"This module is quite for sure not just a repetition of all the other
285			'use strict, use warnings'-approaches, and it's also not the opposite.
286			[...] And for its chosen middle-way it's also not the worst name ever.
287			And everything is documented."
288
289			BKB
290
291			"[Deleted - thanks to Steffen Schwigon for pointing out this review was
292			in error.]"
293
294			Somni
295
296			"the arrogance of the guy"
297			"I swear he tacked somenoe else's name onto the module
298			just so he could use the royal 'we' in the documentation"
299
300	root	1.23	Anonymous Monk
301
302			"You just gotta love this thing, its got META.json!!!"
303
304	root	1.7	dngor
305
306			"Heh. '"<elmex at ta-sa.org>"' The quotes are semantic
307			distancing from that e-mail address."
308
309			Jerad Pierce
310
311			"Awful name (not a proper pragma), and the SYNOPSIS doesn't tell you
312			anything either. Nor is it clear what features have to do with "common
313			sense" or discipline."
314
315			acme
316
317			"THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!"
318
319	root	1.15	apeiron (meta-comment about us commenting^Wquoting his comment)
320	root	1.12
321	root	1.23	"How about quoting this: get a clue, you fucktarded amoeba."
322	root	1.12
323	root	1.20	quanth
324
325	root	1.23	"common sense is beautiful, json::xs is fast, Anyevent, EV are fast and
326			furious. I love mlehmannware ;)"
327	root	1.20
328	root	1.27	apeiron (another meta-comment)
329
330			"apeiron wonders if his little informant is here to steal more quotes"
331
332			ew73
333
334			"... I never got past the SYNOPSIS before calling it shit."
335
336	root	1.19	=head1 FREQUQNTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
337
338			Or frequently-come-up confusions.
339
340			=over 4
341
342			=item Is this module meant to be serious?
343
344			Yes, we would have put it under the C<Acme::> namespace otherwise.
345
346			=item But the manpage is written in a funny/stupid/... way?
347
348			This was meant to make it clear that our common sense is a subjective
349			thing and other people can use their own notions, taking the steam out
350			of anybody who might be offended (as some people are always offended no
351			matter what you do).
352
353			This was a failure.
354
355			But we hope the manpage still is somewhat entertaining even though it
356			explains boring rationale.
357
358			=item Why do you impose your conventions on my code?
359
360			For some reason people keep thinking that C<common::sense> imposes
361			process-wide limits, even though the SYNOPSIS makes it clear that it works
362			like other similar modules - only on the scope that uses them.
363
364			So, no, we don't - nobody is forced to use this module, and using a module
365			that relies on common::sense does not impose anything on you.
366
367			=item Why do you think only your notion of common::sense is valid?
368
369			Well, we don't, and have clearly written this in the documentation to
370			every single release. We were just faster than anybody else w.r.t. to
371			grabbing the namespace.
372
373			=item But everybody knows that you have to use strict and use warnings,
374			why do you disable them?
375
376			Well, we don't do this either - we selectively disagree with the
377			usefulness of some warnings over others. This module is aimed at
378			experienced Perl programmers, not people migrating from other languages
379	root	1.22	who might be surprised about stuff such as C<undef>. On the other hand,
380			this does not exclude the usefulness of this module for total newbies, due
381			to its strictness in enforcing policy, while at the same time not limiting
382			the expresive power of perl.
383
384			This module is considerably I<more> strict than the canonical C<use
385			strict; use warnings>, as it makes all its warnings fatal in nature, so
386			you can not get away with as many things as with the canonical approach.
387	root	1.19
388			This was not implemented in version 1.0 because of the daunting number
389			of warning categories and the difficulty in getting exactly the set of
390			warnings you wish (i.e. look at the SYNOPSIS in how complicated it is to
391			get a specific set of warnings - it is not reasonable to put this into
392			every module, the maintainance effort would be enourmous).
393
394			=item But many modules C<use strict> or C<use warnings>, so the memory
395			savings do not apply?
396
397			I am suddenly so sad.
398
399			But yes, that's true. Fortunately C<common::sense> still uses only a
400			miniscule amount of RAM.
401
402			=item But it adds another dependency to your modules!
403
404			It's a fact, yeah. But it's trivial to install, most popular modules have
405			many more dependencies and we consider dependencies a good thing - it
406			leads to better APIs, more thought about interworking of modules and so
407			on.
408
409	root	1.22	=item Why do you use JSON and not YAML for your META.yml?
410
411			This is not true - YAML supports a large subset of JSON, and this subset
412			is what META.yml is written in, so it would be correct to say "the
413			META.yml is written in a common subset of YAML and JSON".
414
415			The META.yml follows the YAML, JSON and META.yml specifications, and is
416			correctly parsed by CPAN, so if you have trouble with it, the problem is
417			likely on your side.
418
419	root	1.19	=item But! But!
420
421			Yeah, we know.
422
423			=back
424
425	root	1.1	=head1 AUTHOR
426
427			Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
428			http://home.schmorp.de/
429
430	root	1.4	Robin Redeker, "<elmex at ta-sa.org>".
431
432	root	1.1	=cut
433