Scripting Best Practices
Let Perl Help You
Juliet Kemp
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 10:33:54 AM
A perl-specific tip: the single most helpful thing you can do for yourself
is to use these lines in every script:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
The -w flag turns on warnings. This means that if perl sees
something that it thinks looks dubious (e.g. variables mentioned only once),
it'll tell you so.
use strict requires you to declare all your variables
before (or at least at) their first use. Thus,
my $newvar;
// some stuff
$newvar = 3;
will be AOK, as would my $newvar = 3. But $newvar = 3
without the declaration (or a local declaration) will cause an error.
This is fantastic for avoiding typos or variable name brain-blips: if you
declared $newvar and then use $newcar a few lines down,
you'll be warned.
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