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Re: $var = do { ... }?

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Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> writes:
> Quoth tmcd@panix.com:
>> In article <877gz2errh.fsf@sapphire.mobileactivedefense.com>,
>> Rainer Weikusat  <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> wrote:
>> >    [an eval here]
>> >    $@ && do {
>> >        syslog('ERR', "$@");
>> >        return;
>> >    };
>> 
>> Is there a reason to prefer that over
>>     if ($@) {
>>         syslog('ERR', "$@");
>>         return;
>>     }
>> ?  I don't see a reason, so I prefer the "if" version.
>
> You should always prefer Try::Tiny over an explicit eval: there are,
> unfortunately, rather a lot of nasty corner cases in perl's handling of
> $@, and Try::Tiny deals with as many as it can.

It is a lot better to state what these corner-cases are than to make
nebulous scare-mongering statements about them. I'm aware of one: Code
which is executed as part of a destructor and which doesn't localize
$@ properly may cause it to be cleared or set to a different value. In
particular, this will happen when the destructor calls syslog (that's
were I encountered it). This is, however, not applicable here and in
any case, the solution is to fix the destructors. I'll happily learn
about other such cases. But according to the Try::Tiny documentation,
there are none: The only other thing it mentions is that the 'eval'
might accidentally clear $@ if it is running inside another eval and
$@ wasn't properly localized ... but didn't we have this already?

> If you insist on doing the eval yourself, you should test the truth of
> the eval
>
>     eval {
>         ...
>     } or do {
>         ...
>     };
>
> rather than relying on $@,

No, I shouldn't "always do this" because I usually know what the code
will be doing when executed, ie, in this case, that there are neither
outer nor inner evals. I understand that this is more difficult for
someone whose preferred solution to any technical problem is "download
150,000 lines of unknown code from the internet" (in order to save
writing 5 lines of code). Regarding this, I'm a follower of the theory
that blind use of complex devices with unknown properties (third-party
written maxi-mega-modules intended to solve 15,000 different trivial
problems with a huge amount of "heavily optimized general-purpose
code") is bound to cause accidental deaths and other nuisances and
therefore, I avoid such situations (fixing the inevitable bugs in a
large body of unknown code is going to take more time than writing a
small amount of new code).

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$var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-02 17:15 +0000
  Re: $var = do { ... }? merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) - 2012-03-02 09:52 -0800
  Re: $var = do { ... }? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> - 2012-03-02 13:42 -0500
  Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-02 18:44 +0000
    Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-02 19:00 +0000
      Re: $var = do { ... }? merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) - 2012-03-02 11:45 -0800
      Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-02 20:06 +0000
  Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-02 19:18 +0000
    Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-02 19:24 +0000
      Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-02 20:10 +0000
        Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-02 20:43 +0000
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-02 22:47 +0000
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid> - 2012-03-03 15:58 +0100
            Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-03 17:11 +0000
              Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-03 17:19 +0000
              Re: $var = do { ... }? Martijn Lievaart <m@rtij.nl.invlalid> - 2012-03-03 23:58 +0100
                Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-04 00:29 +0000
                Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-04 14:44 +0000
                Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-05 20:50 +0000
        Re: $var = do { ... }? "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2012-03-05 11:35 +0100
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-05 15:22 +0000
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-05 16:38 +0000
      Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-02 20:44 +0000
  Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-15 17:09 +0000
    Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-16 00:18 +0000
      Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-16 14:25 +0000
        Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-16 21:01 +0000
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-16 21:37 +0000
          Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-16 22:56 +0000
            Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-16 23:54 +0000
            Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-17 18:48 +0000
              Re: $var = do { ... }? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2012-03-17 22:53 +0000
              Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-18 15:40 +0000
    Re: $var = do { ... }? "Dr.Ruud" <rvtol+usenet@xs4all.nl> - 2012-03-16 14:08 +0100
      Re: $var = do { ... }? tmcd@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) - 2012-03-16 15:25 +0000
      Re: $var = do { ... }? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2012-03-16 17:46 +0000

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