Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news
From: flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: quasi-bug
Message-ID: <Etr4*$3@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 28 Mar 90 17:21:12 GMT
References: <1121@etnibsd.UUCP> <15290@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet)
Organization: Penn State Computer Science
Lines: 16

Perl is kinda dangerous in many ways.

I once wanted to parse multiple '-e expr' and '-f file' options the
way 'sed' does, with or without a space between the option and the
argument.  Without much thought, I wrote the following, which handles
the optional space in a single statement:
	while ($_ = shift) {
		&expression($1 || shift), next if (/^-e(.*)$/);
		&file($1 || shift), next if (/^-f(.*)$/);
		# ...
	}
Unfortunately, this doesn't work properly for '-e0', '-f0', or '0'.

If strings weren't converted to numbers in boolean contexts . . .
--
Felix Lee	flee@shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!flee