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/cvs/common-sense/sense.pm
Revision: 1.6
Committed: Thu Jul 9 18:09:08 2009 UTC (14 years, 11 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-0_03
Changes since 1.5: +1 -1 lines
Log Message:
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File Contents

# Content
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 # roughly the same as, with much lower memory usage:
10 #
11 # use strict qw(vars subs);
12 # use feature qw(say state switch);
13 # no warnings;
14
15 =head1 DESCRIPTION
16
17 This module implements some sane defaults for Perl programs, as defined by
18 two typical (or not so typical - use your common sense) specimens of
19 Perl coders.
20
21 =over 4
22
23 =item no warnings
24
25 The dreaded warnings. Even worse, the horribly dreaded C<-w> switch. Even
26 though we don't care if other people use warnings (and certainly there are
27 useful ones), a lot of warnings simply go against the spirit of Perl, most
28 prominently, the warnings related to C<undef>. There is nothing wrong with
29 C<undef>: it has well-defined semantics, it is useful, and spitting out
30 warnings you never asked for is just evil.
31
32 So every module needs C<no warnings> to avoid somebody accidentally using
33 C<-w> and forcing his bad standards on our code. No will do.
34
35 Funnily enough, L<perllexwarn> explicitly mentions C<-w> (and not in a
36 favourable way), but standard utilities, such as L<prove>, or MakeMaker
37 when running C<make test> enable them blindly.
38
39 =item use strict qw(subs vars)
40
41 Using C<use strict> is definitely common sense, but C<use strict
42 'refs'> definitely overshoots it's usefulness. After almost two
43 decades of Perl hacking, we decided that it does more harm than being
44 useful. Specifically, constructs like these:
45
46 @{ $var->[0] }
47
48 Must be written like this (or similarly), when C<use strict 'refs'> is in
49 scope, and C<$var> can legally be C<undef>:
50
51 @{ $var->[0] || [] }
52
53 This is annoying, and doesn't shield against obvious mistakes such as
54 using C<"">, so one would even have to write:
55
56 @{ defined $var->[0] ? $var->[0] : [] }
57
58 ... which nobody with a bit of common sense would consider
59 writing. Curiously enough, sometimes, perl is not so strict, as this works
60 even with C<use strict> in scope:
61
62 for (@{ $var->[0] }) { ...
63
64 If that isnt hipocrasy! And all that from a mere program!
65
66 =item use feature qw(say state given)
67
68 We found it annoying that we always have to enable extra features. If
69 something breaks because it didn't anticipate future changes, so be
70 it. 5.10 broke almost all our XS modules and nobody cared either - and few
71 modules that are no longer maintained work with newer versions of Perl,
72 regardless of use feature.
73
74 If your code isn't alive, it's dead, jim.
75
76 =item much less memory
77
78 Just using all those pragmas together waste <blink>I<< B<776> kilobytes
79 >></blink> of precious memory in my perl, for I<every single perl process
80 using our code>, which on our machines, is a lot. In comparison, this
81 module only uses I<< B<four> >> kilobytes (I even had to write it out so
82 it looks like more) of memory on the same platform.
83
84 The money/time/effort/electricity invested in these gigabytes (probably
85 petabytes globally!) of wasted memory could easily save 42 trees, and a
86 kitten!
87
88 =cut
89
90 package common::sense;
91
92 our $VERSION = '0.03';
93
94 sub import {
95 # no warnings
96 ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS};
97
98 # use strict vars subs
99 $^H |= 0x00000600;
100
101 # use feature
102 $^H{feature_switch} =
103 $^H{feature_say} =
104 $^H{feature_state} = 1;
105 }
106
107 1;
108
109 =back
110
111 =head1 THERE IS NO 'no common::sense'!!!! !!!! !!
112
113 This module doesn't offer an unimport. First of all, it wastes even more
114 memory, second, and more importantly, who with even a bit of common sense
115 would want no common sense?
116
117 =head1 STABILITY AND FUTURE VERSIONS
118
119 Future versions might change just about everything in this module. We
120 might test our modules and upload new ones working with newer versions of
121 this module, and leave you standing in the rain because we didn't tell
122 you.
123
124 Most likely, we will pick a few useful warnings, instead of just disabling
125 all of them. And maybe we will load some nifty modules that try to emulate
126 C<say> or so with perls older than 5.10 (this module, of course, should
127 work with older perl versions - supporting 5.8 for example is just common
128 sense at this time. Maybe not in the future, but of course you can trust
129 our common sense).
130
131 =head1 AUTHOR
132
133 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
134 http://home.schmorp.de/
135
136 Robin Redeker, "<elmex at ta-sa.org>".
137
138
139 =cut
140