From: xah@... (Xah Lee)
Date: 2004-01-25T14:35:03+09:00
Subject: perl bug File::Basename and Perl's nature

Just bumped into another irresponsibility in perl.

the crime in question this time is the module File::Basename.

Reproduction:

1. create a directory containing a file of this name: "cdrom.html".
2. "use File::Basename;", with the line:
   ($name,$path,$suffix) = fileparse($File::Find::name, ('.html',
'.m'));
3. Notice that your cdrom.html will be parsed into "cdr" with suffix
"om.html".

expletive Perl and Perl slinging morons.

Now, if you peruse the "documentation" of "perldoc File::Basename",
you'll see that it shouldn't be so. AND, the writting as usuall is
fantastic incompetent. To illustrate, i quote:

--begin quote

 fileparse

 The fileparse() routine divides a file
 specification into three parts: a leading path, a
 file name, and a suffix. The path contains
 everything up to and including the last directory
 separator in the input file specification. The
 remainder of the input file specification is then
 divided into name and suffix based on the
 optional patterns you specify in
 @suffixlist. Each element of this list can be a
 qr-quoted pattern (or a string which is
 interpreted as a regular expression), and is
 matched against the end of name. If this
 succeeds, the matching portion of name is removed
 and prepended to suffix. By proper use of
 @suffixlist, you can remove file types or
 versions for examination.

--end quote

Note the last sentence: "By proper use of @suffixlist, you can remove
file types or versions for examination." Now, this is in sync with the
usual verbiages of unix man pages, of mentioning irrevalent things.
Why the fuck do i need to know what is version, or examination what??
Not every morons in this world is using unix with its morinic
convention of appending things to file names as a versioning system,
and not every moron in this world need to "exam" things. The unix
irrevalency, inprecision, driveling are paragoned above.

Here is a better documentation for the fileparse subroutine.

 fileparse

 fileparse divides a file name into 3 parts:
 directory string, file name, file name
 suffix. fileparse($filename, @suffixes) returns a
 array of 3 elements ($name, $dir_path,
 $suffix). The concocted result of
 "dir_path$name$suffix" is guaranteed to equal to
 $filename. The @suffixes is a array of strings,
 for example ('\.html', '\.txt', '\.png'). These
 strings are interpreted to be regular
 expressions, and is matched against the end of
 $filename.


But NOOO, perl morons are too enamored with driveling to write such
functional spec, after all, the code is sloppy and they don't REALLY
know what the code really does. This is not just one incompetence.
Perl is filled with them.

This report is on Perl version:
  This is perl, v5.8.1-RC3 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level
  (with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail)

--

To the rookie programers out there, i advice against learning Perl.
(i suggest Python instead) Please see
 http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/perlr.html

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
 http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html