The most important thing is to run your programs under the -w flag at all times. You may turn it off explicitly for particular portions of code via the $^ W variable if you must. You should also always run under use strict or know the reason why not. The <use sigtrap> and even <use diagnostics> pragmas may also prove useful.
Regarding aesthetics of code lay out, about the only thing Larry cares strongly about is that the closing curly brace of a multi-line BLOCK should line up with the keyword that started the construct. Beyond that, he has other preferences that aren't so strong:
Here are some other more substantive style issues to think about:
is better than
because the second way hides the main point of the statement in a modifier. On the other hand
is better than
since the main point isn't whether the user typed -v or not.
Similarly, just because an operator lets you assume default arguments doesn't mean that you have to make use of the defaults. The defaults are there for lazy systems programmers writing one-shot programs. If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.
Along the same lines, just because you CAN omit parentheses in many places doesn't mean that you ought to:
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.
Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.
English
) to see if it
will be there. The Config
module will also let you interrogate values
determined by the Configure program when Perl was installed.
Package names are sometimes an exception to this rule. Perl informally
reserves lowercase module names for ``pragma'' modules like integer
and
strict
. Other modules should begin with a capital letter and use mixed
case, but probably without underscores due to limitations in primitive
filesystems' representations of module names as files that must fit into a
few sparse bites.
Function and method names seem to work best as all lowercase. E.g., $obj->as_string().
You can use a leading underscore to indicate that a variable or function should not be used outside the package that defined it.
/x
modifier and
put in some whitespace to make it look a little less like line noise.
Don't use slash as a delimiter when your regexp has slashes or backslashes.
&&
and ||
. Call your subroutines as if they were
functions or list operators to avoid excessive ampersands and parens.