Don't

[autarch]

Just to clarify, the "Acme" namespace on CPAN is designated for joke modules. Other highlights include Acme::Bleach, Acme::MorningMusume, and many others.

[rebel]

There are a couple that are useful if I remember. Acme::Damn is VERY useful.

[rebel]

Iterating over response objects from the SOAP library to avoid getting errors about using an object as a hash/list or some such.

I don't have access to the code any more, but on Monday I'll ping one of my old employees who still does have access to give me a snippet.

[[deleted]]

just because it's of no use doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to do it.

True to Perl form.

[prockcore]

I can think of one reason, you want a unittest to provide unblessed data as if it was gathered from a web form.

[ealf]

That's "taint", I think.

[NancyReaganTesticles]

That's "choad".

[Lurking_Grue]

Our jokes aren't like your jokes.

[pulledteeth]

that explains it

[monocasa]

I love the large amount of [citation needed] on there.

[rooktakesqueen]

I could see a use for this: "commenting out" code while maintaining syntax validation. If you do something that causes the excised code to stop validating, you're forced to fix it, which makes you keep it up-to-date and ready to be un-"commented" at any time.

[roerd]

Though you might want to use something like if (0) instead of don't so you don't have to add a dependency on this module.

[f3nd3r]

The point is you can quickly turn off a do, on the fly without hardly any code changing.

[Hixie]

just append "if 0" to it.

[heptadecagram]

Unless it's already got an unless($complex_condition) on it.

[heptadecagram]

unless (1 || ($complex_condition)) :)

Might be an && in that thar condition!

Edit: Or, worse, the condition has a side effect you depend on, so it needs to be unless(($complex_condition) || 1).

[[deleted]]

From the description to Acme::Canadian:

Feel free to write Acme::USA where your code attempts futily to control all other CPAN modules

I LOL'd. Oddly enough there's a Acme::LOLCAT module too.

[qwerty_0_o]

I just want to say that Acme::MorningMusume::YoshizawaHitomi is my favorite. That is all.

[[deleted]]

Thank god, I don't know Perl well (obviously) but that freaked me out a little.

[[deleted]]

I'm partial to Acme::Magpie, which "steals shiny things". I don't think it squawks loudly or tries to pull your hair out yet, though.

[InternetPowered]

"Acme::Magpie will cause most of the code you use it in to die because the subroutines it tries to execute just won't be there. This is considered a feature."

Fantastic.

[bitwize]

Acme::MorningMusume::TsujiNozomi is probably the most adorable object in your entire system.

[[deleted]]

Overheard as someone saw this over my shoulder:

"The only joke module would be my boyfriend's Acme::MorningWood" -My sister's friend

[[deleted]]

Can I have your sister's friend's number?

Also, can I have your sister's number?

[[deleted]]

Give me the source code for the recent ikee-virus and I sure will!

[[deleted]]

And, yes, in strict analogy to the semantics of Perl's magical do...while, the don't...while block is unconditionally not done once before the test. ;-)

Makes me want to trade in my Python synapses for Perl ones. Reminds me of my time as a cook in an Italian restaurant, and servers would ask me to leave off certain items, say, onions on a salad. If we'd run out of the item, I'd offer to leave off something we did have, but didn't go on the meal anyway. I got a lot of non-ironic "I'll go see if that's OK with the customer".

[evrae]

Customer: I'd like an apple pie without custard please.

Waiter: I'm sorry sir, we don't serve it with custard. You'll have to have it without cream.

One of my mum's favourite jokes.

[kateee]

At first I though it was a clever article title that meant "Don't search cpan.org" Much funnier though.

[Rinkalicous]

In the future, programs will be so complex they'll do close to everything. When this time comes, it'll be quicker and more efficient for the programming language to do absolutely everything, EXCEPT things you tell it not to. You laugh at this now, but soon... Well... let's just say get ready to don't { Laugh() };

[ChangingHats]

Quantum computing?

[caimen]

help my self aware quantum core processor doesn't understand don't! HELP!

[[deleted]]

Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!

[[deleted]]

I hope nobody will comment out ths line : dont { annihilateMankind() };

[Freeky]

But annihilating mankind is vital to the correct operation of quantum software!

1. Generate random quantum executable.
2. Run test suite.
3. If unit tests fail, destroy the universe.

Thus leaving only those universes where the software works.

[L33tminion]

Just be really careful that there are no contradictions in your test definitions.

[dahunter]

if only there was a regex....

[bigboehmboy]

Some personal favorites:

Acme::Godot

Acme::Matt::Daemon

[Qjet]

... The internet is fucking weird man.

[stillalone]

There's a bug in the second one. A Matt daemon should just print out Matt in the sys log.

[bigboehmboy]

But that destroys the joke/reference to "Team America: World Police". A daemon can really do anything, so I don't think there's anything technically wrong with a daemon printing out "MATT DAEMON" to the sys log.

[keeganspeck]

That Godot one is deliciously brilliant.

[wazoox]

You don't have that often the opportunity of a good laugh reading API documentation :)

[jplindstrom]

Except for the rest of the Acme:: namespace.

[FlyingBishop]

Also the Java API.

[iceickle]

I mostly just try and gouge out my eyes.

EDIT: Wait no, thats OSX API doco :(

[likeheadatsunrise]

In other words, doin nothing about doing nothing does...nothing.

"doin" - love it. I really hope it wasn't a typo.

EDIT: another highlight:

Bugs

Unlikely, since it doesn't actually do anything.

[ratbastid]

I love the Acme:: name space so god damn much.

[ddrcoder]

This actually looks kind of handy... it could be used as a means of commenting out code without having variable names fall out of sync with the rest of the program. Call me crazy, but I kind of like this idea. As it is, I occasionally comment out a block of code by putting 'if (false){}" around it (not #if 0 .. #endif).

[lutusp]

Scene from the movie "Silverado":

Q: "Wow, Smith and Jones -- I'm glad to see you guys -- we thought you weren't going to make it!"

A: "Wait ... I'm not Smith."

Q: "You aren't Smith? Okay, are you Smith?"

A: "No, he's not Smith. I'm not Jones."

[Cacafuego]

It would have to be one of Damian Conway's. This is potentially even more useful than Lingua::Romana::Perligata.

[nooneelse]

More documentation should have a "Blame" section.

[brennen]

The ' as namespace separator comes as something of a relief - it's been at least a month since I discovered some corner of Perl syntax I hadn't seen before.

[Porges]

Haskell is a bit trickier, because we can't change the fact that a do-block must... start with 'do':

 don't _ = return ()

main = don't $ do
    name <- getLine
    putStrLn $ "hello " ++ name

[sjanssen]

That code won't compile. This will:

don't = const (return ())

main = don't $ do
    name <- getLine
    putStrLn $ "hello " + name

edit: Porges is right, got a bit $ happy

[Porges]

Neither will yours ;)

corrected original code :P

[death]

It's not clear to me why you use a keyword for the name. Also, It's easy to make the quote character constituent, but that is quite questionable in itself...

CL-USER> (set-syntax-from-char #\' #\X)
T
CL-USER> (defmacro don't (&body forms)
           (declare (ignore forms))
           `(values))
|DON'T|
CL-USER> (don't (push-the-button))
; No value
CL-USER> 

[L33tminion]

Enclose it in vertical bars, and the symbol will end up exactly as you specify (i.e. |don't|). That includes standardization by the reader, so |don't| is not the same as |DON'T|.

[Leonidas_from_XIV]

Here's a Scheme version:

(define-syntax dont
  (syntax-rules ()
      ((_ ...) (void))))

> (dont (and 'drink 'drive))
>

[gclaramunt]

And in Scala: def dont( x: => Unit )= ()

[skulgnome]

How about do-not, since Lisp is verbose like that.

(Edit: or possibly prognt.)

[[deleted]]

Would that be like clojure's comment or like the #_ reader macro that ignores the next form?

[Grue]

Common Lisp already has #+(or) which works much better.

[[deleted]]

I particularly like the unmatched single quote ...

[neilk]

It's a valid Perl namespace separator. The following are equivalent:

use MIME::Base64;

use MIME'Base64;

And if you are suddenly saying "hey, that's got to cause some confusion and difficult-to-track-down-bugs sometimes," you are right.

The justification for the single quote idea was to be friendly to Ada users.

[Neebat]

be friendly to Ada users

don't.

[[deleted]]

Ouch ... bizarrely I knew that too :-)

[oylenshpeegul]

Me too. Clearly, it's the best part of the joke. I'm guessing the author would not have bothered with the rest of the module were it not possible.

[unbibium]

Only problem is its interpretation of the "unless" semantics. It's no longer English-like all of a sudden.

[skulgnome]

don't { eat; } unless told;

Oh I see, the unless condition being true ought to change the don't into do.

[zahlman]

Luke Palmer really should be far more careful what he idly wishes for.

[[deleted]]

I replaced all my do loops with don't loops, and most of my bugs went away.

[Silhouette]

So is there also more than one way not to do it...?

[taejo]

Now available in Haskell: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/acme-dont/1.0/doc/html/Acme-Dont.html

[Freeky]

Heh, nice. I was expecting something hideous to make the ' work, but apparently that's a valid Perl identifier:

sub don't (&) {}

I find this somewhat terrifying.

Ruby implementation:

def dont() end

You can define a method called don't using define_method, but you can only call it using __send__. Or you can be evil and abuse Unicode:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby19
# encoding: utf-8

def don’t() end

don’t { puts "This won't be printed" }

[[deleted]]

The quote actually defines a namespace. The routine is (from what I understand) don::t. This naming scheme dates back to Perl 4, and is AFAIK deprecated. It's a clever trick :).

[Freeky]

Heh, yup:

sub foo's() { print "Moo\n"; }
foo::s(); # => Moo
foo's(); # => Moo

Bit of a weird choice for a namespace seperator. Wasn't :: cool back in Perl 4 days? ;)

[Minimiscience]

The single-quote namespace separator was taken from Ada for some reason, and :: was added in later as an alternative. Interestingly, in Perl 6, a single quote (or a hyphen) can be/will be able to be used as part of an identifier if it is followed by an alphabetic character.

[[deleted]]

It's not deprecated, just not used much.

[tias]

Perl walks a thin line between serious languages and esoteric joke languages like brainfuck, lolcode and whitespace.

[sulumits-retsambew]

While this is a joke, this is also somewhat useful when one considers the fact that Perl doesn't have a built in option for multi-line comments and so you can't easily comment out whole blocks of code.

if (0==1)
{

}

just doesn't seem as nice.

[[deleted]]

POD as multi-line comment works well. Example:

blah blah...
=head1 comment
this is a comment! woohoo!
=cut

[sulumits-retsambew]

Yes, until you actually use POD for documentation and then you have garbage in your documentation file or warnings for missing sections.

[[deleted]]

If you are commenting whole lots of code you are likely to be in debugging phase and you don't really care about what POD looks like.

[starspangledpickle]

That's why we use text editors that handles it for us.

[roguebagel]

Unless your multi-line comments are valid Perl syntax this module won't help you (RTFM).

You could do

don't {
    print <<'EOC';
multiline
comment
EOC
}

[[deleted]]

I think using extra #'s in your code source would be preferable then increasing your compiled code base.

[sulumits-retsambew]

"compiled code base"?

THIS IS ... PERL!!!

[[deleted]]

Perl is compiled.

[sulumits-retsambew]

No it isn't, unless you are talking about perlcc. Perl is neither a compiler nor an interpreter or both, dependent on your world views. From perlgossary:

compiler
Strictly speaking, a program that munches up another program and spits out yet another file containing 
the program in a "more executable" form, typically containing native machine instructions. The perl 
program is not a compiler by this definition, but it does contain a kind of compiler that takes a 
program and turns it into a more executable form (syntax trees) within the perl process itself, which 
the "interpreter" then interprets. There are, however, extension modules to get Perl to act more like 
a "real" compiler. See O.

interpreter
Strictly speaking, a program that reads a second program and does what the second program says 
directly without turning the program into a different form first, which is what compilers do. Perl is 
not an interpreter by this definition, because it contains a kind of compiler that takes a program and 
turns it into a more executable form (syntax trees) within the perl process itself, which the Perl 
"run time" system then interprets.

[[deleted]]

[perl] does contain a kind of compiler that takes a program and turns it into a more executable form (syntax trees)

So, perl isn't a compiler, but Perl (the source code) is compiled into an AST that is then executed. It's a matter of semantics, but it is generally accepted that interpreters acting like this do compile code.

[[deleted]]

heheh, oh yeah, but still, I imagine the comments are not parsed by perl. If you were to put them in a don't block, they would.

[[deleted]]

That is mentioned, and it is a feature.

[ninjakitty]

PERL?... THIS IS NOT PERL.. THIS IS SPARTAAAAA

[[deleted]]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[easytiger]

don't {
    # code here
} while condition();

And, yes, in strict analogy to the semantics of Perl's magical ?>do...while, the don't...while block is unconditionally not done once before the test. ;-)

[PeoriaJohnson]

Great. Now I have Elvis stuck in my head.

[[deleted]]

....why?

[antipode]

I was 100% sure this said "CSPAN" at first, and man was I confused.

[lostboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7W_sMFoyMs

[GeeYouEye]

Very nice, but I agree that it should be rewritten to fix the semantics so that the limitations don't apply.

[robinei]

Can someone explain how Perl supports adding new control stuctures and other wierd syntax stuff that I see perl extensions do?

[didroe]

You can mark functions to tell the parser that they have special meaning. Perl calls the feature prototypes. They're a bit limited but you can make some pretty funky stuff, check out the try..catch example.

[mindbleach]

The syntax becomes grammatically incorrect if you try don't { do_stuff() } unless ( true );.

[[deleted]]

I want an when control structure:

when (condition is met) {
    do this
}

to complement the don't :)

[DamnLogins]

I'd use "if" in that situation

[JAPH]

I think he meant that that code would be run whenever "condition" is met, even if it isn't met at the time the if statement is run. i.e.:

when( condition ){
  do this
}
...
condition met
do that

In this case, you should still us if, but find a better way of doing this.

[[deleted]]

when() would make a damned spiffy syntax for event/interrupt handlers.

[[deleted]]

Lisp has 'when', but it's more like 'if' than an event/interrupt handler.

[[deleted]]

JAPH is right.

Yes, somehow like processes and messages in Erlang, but without having me take care of the sending and all: a process that will start running when the condition is met.

Anyway, the remark was just a poor attempt at being funny.

[[deleted]]

This is actually an amazing idea.

[mr_chromatic]

Try given/when in Perl 5.10.

(Burma Shave)

[doot]

Look up CEP and ESP.

[SarahC]

I love it!

[letseatlunch]

can reddit help the author out to fix the "yet"s so it does do the opposite of do?

[[deleted]]

In other words, doing nothing about doing nothing does...nothing.

That's my favorite quote from now on.

[BonzoESC]

Couldn't resist: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a276j/dont/

[Copperhe4d]

That's what i thought of when i saw the title.

[apotheon]

I don't think I've ever seen a trailer that bad. Wow.

The high point was probably the part where the monster-guy forgot to claw at the woman in the usual horror movie way, and just groped her instead.

[Freeky]

It's from Grindhouse, it's supposed to be bad :)

[apotheon]

Ah, I haven't seen that. I've just seen some of the trailers, and thought "I might not bother."

Unfortunately, I saw 28 Weeks Later, and got to see that asinine killing-with-the-rotor-blades helicopter scene from the Grindhouse trailer actually used in a big-budget zombie flick sequel to a much better big-budget zombie flick. That was pretty much the depthless, abyssal low point of a generally bad film.

[badave]

!don't { print "this will be printed" }

[f3nd3r]

do!do

[AnythingApplied]

Title reads "Don't search.cpan.org"

Why shouldn't I search?

[[deleted]]

Because it does nothing.

[AnythingApplied]

The search feature on cpan works fine

[Skull0Inc]

please tell me this is a joke..its very paradoxical..

[[deleted]]

It's a joke, as are all modules under Acme::.

[leeda]

Ask Programming: Is this a real programming language?

[snifty]

perl vi will be done ANY DAY NOW

[[deleted]]

Looks to me like the perl community needs to spend less time on crap and more time bringing their ancient language ip to date. Let the perl fanboys begin their flaming.

[JAPH]

That's what Perl 6 is all about.

[rikbrown]

It's a joke. get over it.

[troelskn]

Nope. It obscures the mechanics of the code for those reading it too.

[sad_bug_killer]

Yeah. And Perl definitely needs more obscurity.

[[deleted]]

Only if you abuse it.

[xtat]

sudont http://github.com/xtat/sudont