steve-g-lynn

PWC 235 I tried to restrict to Perl 4 syntax for both challenges this week, as documented in Rex Swain's Perl 4 reference or the 1st edition of Programming perl. I do use nested subroutines, which I am not sure would actually work in Perl 4, though they comply with the syntax. My programs are tested on Perl 5.38. (The -l in the shebang line works only in Perl 5. The Perl 4 equivalent was -L012 [in Unix], which is no longer available.)  Update and disclaimer : These programs will not work on Perl 4 as I discovered later when I found and installed a Perl 4.019 executable. For one thing, the ability to assign a subroutine to a locally scoped typeglob was not available in Perl 4. My solutions to this week's challenges highlight the usefulness of the splice array operator. Challenge 1 (Remove One) We are given an array of integers and asked to verify if removing any one element will leave the remaining elements in monotonically ascending order. A helper sub-subroutine ...

PWC 234 I tried to restrict to Perl 4 syntax for both challenges this week, as documented in Rex Swain's Perl 4 reference or the 1st edition of Programming perl. I do use nested subroutines, which I am not sure would actually work in Perl 4, though they comply with the syntax. My programs are tested on Perl 5.38. (The -l in the shebang line works only in Perl 5. The Perl 4 equivalent was -L012 in Unix, which is no longer available.) As I have mentioned before, my aims in using the old syntax are just mild nostalgia plus to add a bit of additional challenge to the task. I know that this is not the most efficient or idiomatic way to do things today. But I should observe that it is really cool that I am able to write code using 30-year old syntax, and run it unmodified on the latest Perl 5.38. You cannot do this with Python 3 for example. This very deep backward compatibility is one of those unsung underappreciated beauties of Perl 5. In my opinion, it is a very cool thing in...

PWC 233 I tried to restrict to Perl 4 syntax for both challenges this week, as documented in Rex Swain's Perl 4 reference or the 1st edition of Programming perl.  As I have mentioned before, my aims in using the old syntax are just mild nostalgia plus to add a bit of additional challenge to the task. But I should observe that it is really cool that I am able to write code using 30-year old syntax, and run it unmodified on the latest Perl 5.38. You cannot do this with Python 3 for example. This very deep backward compatibility is one of those unsung underappreciated beauties of Perl 5. In my opinion, it is a very cool thing indeed. Update and disclaimer : These programs will not work on Perl 4 as I discovered later when I found and installed a Perl 4.019 executable. For one thing, the ability to assign a subroutine to a locally scoped typeglob was not available in Perl 4. Challenge 1 (Similar Words) We are given an array of strings with every string consisting of alphabetical c...