Re: pod bugs

[Peter Wolfe <wolfe@telostech.com>]

Tom Christiansen wrote:
> 
> >It was definitely supposed to be /^\s*$/ ('*' and not '+') because
> >that is what actually appears in the code; and the term "blank line"
> >from the perlpod(1) pages is apparently open to interpretation (some
> >regard a "blank line" as different from an "empty line" as different
> >from who knows what else).
> 
> Only if you want a wrong interpretation. :-)
> 
> Pod is paragraph-based.  Perl, emboddied its notion of what $/=''
> means, considers a paragraph to be a chunk of text that ends with
> two or more consecutive newlines.  Putting something between those
> newlines renders it no longer the end of the paragraph.
> 
> Yes, I know this is idiot-prone.   Idiots screw it up all the time.
> But that's what $/='' means, and that's what a paragraph means in
> Perl.  You don't think _ goes in English words just because in Perl,
> \w includes _.  Likewise, Perl has its own persnickety notion of
> "paragraph".  Anywhere that Perl documentation talks about paragraphs,
> this is what it means.

Hmm...  There are probably at least two options here:

1. Fix humans to make sure they never confuse /^$/ with /^\s*$/ which is
probably possible but seems hard :-).  Seems to me that humans (even the
super ones on this list) are prone to confusion.

2. Fix Perl which seems capable of doing most things - hard or easy and
which has demonstrated that it is capable of understanding what humans mean
not what they say.

I would vote for fixing pod2... tools so that "blank lines" match the
pattern /^\s*$/.

-- 
Peter Wolfe                      Tel: (604) 303-2300
Telos Engineering Limited,       http://www.telostech.com
120 - 13120 Vanier Place,        FAX: (604) 276-0501
Richmond, BC, V6V 2J2.           email: wolfe@teloseng.com

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Follow-Ups from:

Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

References to:

Tom Christiansen <tchrist@chthon.perl.com>

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