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Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open)

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* Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com> [2008-07-28 04:00]:
> In-Reply-To: Message from Zefram <zefram@fysh.org> 
>    of "Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:18:19 BST." <20080726221819.GA15269@fysh.org> 
> 
> > I think these (<> and some of the regexp things) are
> > unreasonably difficult to understand.  
> 
> While I see that you yourself have some difficulty, one
> cannot--and should not--casually extrapolate one particular
> user's conceptual troubles to an entire community or user-base.  
> 
> Perhaps it was not well-explained to you.  I don't know.  But I
> firmly believe that programmers who'd rather write, or see
> written, this sort of sequence:
> 
>     if (@ARGV == 0) { 
> 	@ARGV = ("-");
>     }
> 
> ARGUMENT:
>     while (@ARGV != 0) {
> 	$ARGV = shift(@ARGV);        
> 	$ARGV = "<&=STDIN" if $ARGV eq "-";
> 	# that's an fdopen(3S); use <&STDIN (or <&0)for dup2(2)
> 	unless (open(ARGV, $ARGV)) {
> 	    print STDERR "Can't open $ARGV: $!\n";
> 	    next ARGUMENT;
> 	}
> 
> LINE:   
> 	while (defined($line = readline(*ARGV))) {
> 	    if ($line =~ /^=for\s+(index|later)/) {
> 		next LINE;
> 	    } 
> 	    $chars = $chars + length($line);
> 	    $words = $words + split(" ", $line, 0);
> 	    $lines = $lines + ($line =~ tr[\n][]);
> 	}
>     }
> 
> instead of just 
> 
>     while (<>) {
>         next if /^=for\s+(index|later)/;
>         $chars += length;
>         $words += split;
>         $lines += y/\n//;
>     }
> 
> or even better
> 
>     #!/usr/bin/perl -n
>     next if /^=for\s+(index|later)/;
>     $chars += length;
>     $words += split;
>     $lines += y/\n//;
> 
> are few and far between.  They do not understand Perl's
> *spirit*, and probably never shall.
That is a perfect demonstration of the problem. Currently, if
I want 3-arg open semantics, I have no option but to write those
exact reams of code, whereas if want 2-arg open semantics, I can
just use the diamond and get that whole raft of features for
free. In practice, that means I opt for the diamond despite it
having what for my use cases is a misfeature. Having the two
options be just a *little* less disproportionate would be
worthwhile, don’t you agree?
Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <https://plasmasturm.org/>

Thread Previous | Thread Next

• Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Tom Christiansen
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Aristotle Pagaltzis
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Zefram
• RE: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Ed Avis
• RE: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Mark Dominus
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using2-argument open) by Glenn Linderman
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Rafael Garcia-Suarez
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Zefram
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Abigail
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Tels
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using 2-argument open) by Rafael Garcia-Suarez
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using2-argument open) by Andy Dougherty
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Dave Mitchell
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Abigail
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Dave Mitchell
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using2-argument open) by H.Merijn Brand
• Re: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGV using2-argument open) by Glenn Linderman
• RE: Alarums and Excursions (was [perl #2783] Security of ARGVusing 2-argument open) by Ed Avis