Cool/useful short examples of Perl?

['lesleyb']

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 07:46:08PM -0400, Uri Guttman wrote:
> >>>>> "NC" == Nicholas Clark <nick at ccl4.org> writes:
> 
> 
>   NC> You've stated that you *don't* expect newbies to know how to read
>   NC> that line.  Leo is currently looking for things that newbies could
>   NC> be expected to read.
> 
> then you will get one liners that don't do much. you can't have it both
> ways. either they are useful or they are so simple that newbies can read
> them. using modules isn't a way around that as they shouldn't use one
> without understanding it. so my way is to show how useful a small amount
> of perl can be. get them intrigued and wanting to learn how to do
> that. i haven't seen anything else posted here that is even close to
> useful and cool and newbie level yet. but everyone can jump on
> mine. wow.

I suspect the important thing here is TMTOWTDI .

To be absolutely honest I couldn't come up with a one-liner like the one
you suggested.  However it was interesting to read it.

I won't pretend I learned how to write good one-liners from it but maybe
by reading and working through more of the same I could improve.

But I am not a Perl newbie.  And I do agree about the maintenance issue.
But a Perl newbie today might have to maintain such code tomorrow.

Perhaps the concept that Leon is working on could be extended to more 
intermediate levels as well?

Kind Regards

Lesley