Moving files

[pll at lanminds.com]

In a message dated: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 12:06:23 EST
Derek Martin said:

>I disagree, in large part, though I've definitely seen worse. I find
>the syntax of the grep and map to be pretty cryptic,

How is it cryptic?

	grep BLOCK LIST
               Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of
               LIST (locally setting $_ to each element) and
               returns the list value consisting of those ele­
               ments for which the expression evaluated to true.

My grep was pretty damn simple:

        grep { ! /^\./ && -f $_ } readdir(DIR);

          ^    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^        ^
          |            |               |
        grep         BLOCK           LIST

And my map was the same:

       map BLOCK LIST
               Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of
               LIST (locally setting $_ to each element) and
               returns the list value composed of the results of
               each such evaluation.

       map {($n = $_)=~ s/\s+/_/g; rename ($_, $n)} @f;
        ^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   ^
        |                     |                      |
       map                  BLOCK                   LIST

The syntax is identical for both map and grep (they do slightly 
different things, but not that different).  Both take a block or an 
expression an operated on some list of "things".

Now, I will grant that both can be used in quite esoteric and bizarre 
ways to achieve side-effect results, but that's not so different than 
a lot of C code which does the same.

I will also grant you that the regexps lend to some amount of 
unreadability, however, these shouldn't pose a problem with someone 
familiar with sed, awk, and *grep.
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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