Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cunews!cognos!alanm
From: alanm@cognos.UUCP (Alan Myrvold)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: A gripe about catching programming errors in Perl
Message-ID: <8974@cognos.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 90 17:01:03 GMT
Reply-To: alanm@cognos.UUCP (Alan Myrvold)
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 24

Recently, I wrote a bit of a perl script that looked something
like this:

    open(oct,"< October");
    while (<oct>) {
       print;
    }

Even though the file October exists, nothing was printed.  This
is due to my choice of oct as a filehandle, since oct is a built-in
function.

Why couldn't I have at least gotten a warning during the compile?
With perl's big collection of functions, I can't be the only one
making mistakes like this.  Is it ever proper to use a function name
where a file handle is expected?

                                          - Alan

---
Alan Myrvold          3755 Riverside Dr.     uunet!mitel!cunews!cognos!alanm
Cognos Incorporated   P.O. Box 9707          alanm@cognos.uucp
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