From: Brian > > Why is it "good practice" to write PERL the way it is done? >
Discussing coding styles often degenerates into a religious and/or political argument, but I will try an overview. The purpose for arranging code in various styles is to assist the next programmer on the project. While there are many individual styles and idiosyncrasies, the basic intent is to provide visual clues to the structure of the code. Think of this as an attempt to make it easier to understand when looking at it for the first time. Since that first time in some cases is the first time after not seeing it for six months by the poor sap that wrote it in the first place, it is usually a good idea to figure out some style and stick to it. Programming shops that practice regular code reviews may even dictate a specific style. There are a number of good books and articles on coding style floating around. Some text editors can enable or even enforce certain styles and there are "pretty print" utilities that will insert the extra indents for you. But the idea is to think of the next person that will need to understand this code. That might even be you, six month or a year from now. Will you be able to figure out what you wrote, quickly, and be able to modify it without breaking it? If you care to notice, even the prose above has a certain style. No, it's probably not great, but it does add some indication of structure to what I have written. Hopefully it helps. If not, I can blame my high school English teachers. None of them are around to defend themselves any more. Bob McConnell -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/
