Introduction

• Always check the return codes of system calls. Good error messages should go to STDERR, include which program caused the problem, what the failed system call and arguments were, and (very important) should contain the standard system error message for what went wrong. Here's a simple but sufficient example:

          opendir(D, $dir) or die "can't opendir $dir: $!";

• Line up your transliterations when it makes sense:

          tr [abc]
             [xyz];

  The above should be aligned since it includes an embedded tab.

• Think about reusability. Why waste brainpower on a one-shot when you might want to do something like it again? Consider generalizing your code. Consider writing a module or object class. Consider making your code run cleanly with use strict and -w (or use warnings in Perl 5.6) in effect. Consider giving away your code. Consider changing your whole world view. Consider... oh, never mind.

• Be consistent.

• Be nice.

Links

This link should just include one word: Pod::LaTeX

This link should include the text test even though it refers to Pod::LaTeX: test.

Standard link: Pod::LaTeX.

Now refer to an external section: "sec" in Pod::LaTeX

Lists

Test description list with long lines

Some short text

Some additional para.

• Nested itemized list

• Second item

some longer text than that

and again.

this text is even longer and greater than 40 characters

Some more content for the item.

this is some text with something across the 40 char boundary

This is item content.

Escapes

Test some normal escapes such as < (lt) and > (gt) and | (verbar) and ~ (tilde) and & (amp) as well as < (Esc lt) and | (Esc verbar) and / (Esc sol) and > (Esc gt) and & (Esc amp) and " (Esc quot) and even α (Esc alpha).

For blocks

Some text that should appear.

Some more text that should appear

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