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Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister


by davies (Vicar)
on Mar 03, 2005 at 11:39 UTC ( #436161=user: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??

Born 11/4/60
Accountant with ingrowing computers
Excel expert, Perl novice
Currently unemployed & looking for work.
Photo by Mark Keating (

use strict or solve your own problem

Recently, there have been a few SOPW posts that I might have enjoyed trying to answer, but either I didn't or I did so only sketchily. The reason was that the code provided didn't use strict. In one case I had solved one problem, the OP had changed the code and wanted more help, but had commented out use strict. I didn't try any more.

As far as use strict is concerned, either your problem can be identified by it or it can't. If it can, why not do it yourself and save me the trouble? If it can't, you want me to hack your code. In doing that, there is every danger that I will make a typo or some other trivial blunder that use strict would catch. So I would have to put it in and declare every variable. You want my time. Would you prefer me to spend it solving your problem or correcting your code to use strict? You can't solve your problem - if you could, you wouldn't be posting a SOPW. Maybe I can. I don't know until I try. But if trying will mean a lot of donkey work that you could do for me, I'll work on something more interesting, at least until someone else has done the donkey work.

This is selfish. It may be even more selfish than your decision not to use strict. But I'm good at selfish. I've got over 50 years experience at it. If your problem looks like fun, I will selfishly work on it and if I succeed, out of hubris (a form of selfishness), I will show off how clever I am by offering a solution. But if your problem looks like donkey work, I'm not interested.

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