[FormMagick-devel] perl tips

[Kirrily S. R. <sk...@in...>]

Here's a tip:

    my $formatted_result = "";
    for (my $i=0; $i<=length(@result); $i++) {
      if ($i == 0) {
        # use for debugging
        #$formatted_result = "$validation: $result[$i]";
        $formatted_result = "$result[$i]";
      } elsif ($i == length(@result) ) {
        $formatted_result = "$formatted_result.";
      } else {
        $formatted_result = "$formatted_result; $result[$i]";
      }
    }

... is more easily written as:

    my $formatted_result = join("; ", @result) . ".";

Perl does most of this stuff for you.  If you find yourself writing a 
"for" loop there's almost certainly an easier way.  Often it's a 
"foreach" loop.

Also, a style issue... I'm personally of the opinion that arrays should 
have "plural" names.  That means that in the example above, @result 
should be called @results.  Scalars should obviously have singular names.
Hashes should have names that reflect the plurality of their "value" 
fields.  The main point of this is to make the code "read" as easily as
possible.

See my article on www.perl.com from, oh, January 2000 sometime, for more 
about my idea of good Perl coding standards :)

K.


-- 
Kirrily 'Skud' Robert - sk...@in... - http://infotrope.net/
"I have this horrible feeling that some of the less-readable works of James 
Joyce might just turn out to be early-release Windows/NT code." -- Tanuki