[2663] in BarnOwl Developers
Re: [PATCH] add a random zsig function
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin Riggle)
Tue Sep 21 00:38:25 2010
Cc: Zev Benjamin <zev@mit.edu>, barnowl-dev <barnowl-dev@mit.edu>
From: Kevin Riggle <kevinr@free-dissociation.com>
To: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>
In-reply-to: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1009210011520.15192@dr-wily.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:38:19 -0400
Excerpts from Anders Kaseorg's message of Tue Sep 21 00:19:37 -0400 2010:
> On Mon, 20 Sep 2010, Zev Benjamin wrote:
> > > + my $zsig = "@{[$lines[int(rand(scalar @lines))]]}";
> >
> > Why do you create of a list ref, deference it, and do string
> > interpolation on it?
>
> I assume he was trying to address the warning I mentioned earlier when
> @lines is empty ‘Use of uninitialized value $zsig in scalar chomp’.
In fact. :)
> But
> actually he just traded one warning for another: ‘Use of uninitialized
> value within @lines in string’.
Oh, these are warnings, not errors. That explains why I wasn't seeing them.
(Have we considered turning on 'use warnings' and 'use strict' in the BarnOwl
codebase? I bet that would be a bit of a nightmare, actually. :/)
>
> How about writing something more obvious to handle that case explicitly:
> return '' if !@lines;
>
> (There seems to be something about this feature that encourages excessive
> bikeshedding, for which I apologize.)
Honestly, pointing out issues with my Perl is so far from the bikeshedding I
was worried about that I almost don't mind it at all. :-)
>
> > > + open my $file, '<', $zsigfile or die "File $zsigfile is
> > > inaccessible or nonexistent.";
>
> Including $! in the message would tell the user which problem it is.
>
Updated patch has been sent.
- Kevin
