reduce boilerplate for new programs

[toddr]

use strict, use warnings, etc. defaulted to on.

Code which can't support it must do no strict

[leonerd]

I'm in two minds about this one. It'd be great to have "default-sensible" semantics but as ever that really strong noise of "back-compat" comes to mind. I wonder if there's a hybrid ground somewhere.

Here's a Bold and Couragous[1] idea: What if we invented a new file suffix - for sake of argument lets call it .p5, which basically acts like a .pm module but with automatically some fixed pragmata in effect - use strict; use warnings; use feature :5.30 or somesuch. Setting aside the small matter of how to handle conflicts if both .pm and .p5 exist, that might give a nice way to start writing default-nice code.

A tiny problem comes with actual scripts (i.e. non-modules but instead files beginning with a #!perl shebang), but maybe that can be solved by the addition of some lettered flag. Picking totally at random the fact that my perlrun(1) does not mention a -y flag, maybe solved by

#!/usr/bin/perl -y

to default the same set of pragmata.

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[1] - I slightly refer to the Yes Minister sense, which for those not familiar with it can be explained by the third quote in https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister#Episode_Six:_The_Right_to_Know

[atoomic]

nice idea @leonerd to use a custom file suffix to imply, give me all the power, I like it

[leonerd]

@atoomic I wouldn't say "all" - "all" would basically imply doing

use feature ':latest';

and that comes with it the inherent danger that the moment you update perl you get a new feature set of new features, new keywords, any of which might now conflict. This is why i called it Bold and Courageous.

Really I don't see what's wrong with

use feature ':5.30';

or whatever your target is for this file. It keeps every individual file safe from accidental breakage from any future version of perl.

[tonycoz]

I could see use feature ':5.30'; or whatever doing whatever is considered the sane boilerplate at that version.

If we add no legacy 'indirect' for 5.32, then use feature ':5.32'; might also enable that without breaking older code.

Isn't there a CPAN module that already does this? With the versioning?

The problem with a new suffix is your typical perl program running on a POSIX-ish system doesn't have a suffix, it's just called "ack", or "rename"

[leonerd]

@tonycoz for programs invoked via shebang (i.e. the ack-like usecase), a new flag could handle that - see my -y example.

Though I should again clarify - I don't actually advocate for that position. I'd much rather we just did use 5.032 or use feature ':5.32'; or whatever