Knowing Perl (was Re: [Mimedefang] Simplified single purpose mimedefang-filter)

[Jan-Pieter Cornet]

On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 02:54:26PM -0400, David F. Skoll wrote:
> And as a colleague so tactfully pointed out, people who _really_ know
> Perl would probably be quite horrified by the MIMEDefang code... :-)

Nonsense. While MIMEDefang probably wouldn't get a very high "Kwalitee"
rating or whatever unit is used on CPAN to measure bogobeauty, I
found the code quite accessible. It's easy to see through the general
workings, the code is not inefficient, and it is easy to find the
parts that are responsible for the functionality I was trying to
understand.

There are a couple of things that could be tidied up, like the huge
list of globals. Then again, you could in theory put all that in OO,
aesthetically encapsulate the hell out of it, and at the same time kill
both the documented API and the performance... your design isn't bad
per se.

If you want to look at really incomprehensible perl, look at my old
signature that I've included for the occasion, and for really bad perl,
try thedailywtf.com :)

-- 
#!perl -wpl # mmfppfmpmmpp mmpffm <pmmppfmfpppppfmmmf at fpffmm4mmmpmfpmf.ppppmf>
$p=3-2*/[^\W\dmpf_]/i;s.[a-z]{$p}.vec($f=join('',$p-1?chr(sub{$_[0]*9+$_[1]*3+
$_[2]}->(map{/p|f/i+/f/i}split//,$&)+97):qw(m p f)[map{((ord$&)%32-1)/$_%3}(9,
3,1)]),5,1)='`'lt$&;$f.eig;                                # Jan-Pieter Cornet