Perl's CGI is broken

  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use CGI;
  use Test::More qw( no_plan );

  my $cgi = new CGI;

  $cgi->param('foobar', 6);
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '6', "6 is a magical number" );

  $cgi->param('foobar', 4);
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '4', "And 4 is a favourite" );

  my %hash = ( "random_key" => '13' );

  $cgi->param('foobar', $hash{'randomKey'} );
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '13',
      "but a simple typo in a hash key shouldn't be so hard to find" ); # Fail
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '4',
      "so it hasn't changed but there's no complaint" );

  $cgi->param('foobar', $hash{'random_key'} );
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '13', "The key is to get the key right :-)" );

What sort of deranged API silently ignores calling a setter with an undef? Surely a warning or exception could have been thrown? Or perhaps setting the value to undef, or to the empty string, or even "You messed up, Idiot!". But quietly swallowing the error and leaving the value unchanged is really bad form.

This sort of thing doesn't rate well on Rusty's API design advice: How Do I Make This Hard to Misuse?. Grrr.

tech/code/Perl | 20 Jun 2008 | #

Zookeepr - Hearding the Elephants

Awesome! - Zookeepr is seeing some open-development lovin'.

tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 16 Jun 2008 | #

LinuxSA June 2008 - Open Street Map (OSM)

  Hi all,

  Time for the June meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 17th June, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Adrian Billiau will be giving a talk on Open Street Map (OSM), a
   free editable map of the whole world, made by people like you.

   The presentation will include:
   - about the OSM project
   - tools used by the project
   - advice on contributing, collecting data, uploading data, and using
     JavaOSM
   - a demonstration

   Adrian is a 3rd year Surveying student at the University of South
   Australia.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.  Bring
   $8 if you are hungry.

  For more information:

   Email:        organisers@linuxsa.org.au
   Web Page:     http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
   Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
   IRC:          #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net

tech/LinuxSA | 11 Jun 2008 | #