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From: zwicky@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: "MOST COMMON NOVICE BUG" contest
Message-ID: <30301@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com>
Date: 8 Mar 90 22:29:03 GMT
References: <15230@bfmny0.UU.NET> <15232@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1118@etnibsd.UUCP>
Reply-To: zwicky@stegosaur.itstd.sri.com.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Lines: 25

In article <1118@etnibsd.UUCP> vsh@etnibsd.UUCP (Steve Harris) writes:
>So, what are the "TEN MOST COMMON NOVICE BUGS" in perl?  I nominate:
>
>    Placing a comma after a filehandle in a print statement.

My personal favorite is using == instead of eq or != for ne. I *still*
do that all too often...

On the 10 most wanted features list, I have the common desire for
interesting output formatting of numbers with formats instead of
printf, and the not-so-common and perhaps unobtainable desire to be
able to use C libraries.

We have Sybase, see, and they provide all these fun
libraries that are the *only* way you can talk directly to the
database server. I find it intensely frustrating that it has this
perfectly good socket with a database server on it that I can't talk
to. I've assuaged my frustration some by writing a tiny
Sybase-server-server in C that I *can* talk to, but still...

Sybase also led me into one of the more twisted uses I've made of
Perl; a Perl program writes Perl programs that write
SQL programs that convert files to Sybase databases.

	Elizabeth Zwicky