Well. Every time I think my new Dumper is finished I discover some new bug. And often the bug aint mine, but rather a perl bug or a Data::Dumper bug.
Anyway, Ive come to the conclusion that (and 'a data structure' means any arbitrary data structure)
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Its not possible to correctly dump a perl data structure with just one pass (which is what Data::Dumper tries to do).
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Its not possible to dump a data structure correctly without using the tools in Array::RefElem
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Its not possible to correctly dump a data structure using named vars only.
Also in the course of developing Data::BFDump I have discovered bugs in
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Data::Dumper
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Perl
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B::Deparse
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Test::More
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List::Utils
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Data::Dump
This accounts for some of the most well known and highly regarded authors in Perldom. And you know what? Of the bugs I have reported
NONE of the authors has responded. Not so much of a peep. Even on the perl5porters list I got only one reply. Frankly the impression I get of that place is that if you cant write C/C++ code in your sleep then they wont even speak to you. A pretty disappointing reaction considering the kind of community that Ive come to love at places like Perlmonks.
Dont get me wrong I appeciate that the perl porters work hard and do a good job. I appreciate that many of the authors above are very busy people with lots on their plate. But a lousy email saying 'ACK' to a bug report really doesnt seem like that much to ask. Hell at least I went out of my way to find and inform them of the bug.
a slighty annoyed demerphq
Come now
pudge on 2002-05-17T17:33:11
Could it merely be that many of them are busy? When did you notify them, and did you supply patches? What were some of the bugs?
Not replying
TorgoX on 2002-05-18T10:47:32
I too was just thinking that it's very odd that of the people I've emailed about the Apache::MP3 localization project, many just didn't reply at all. My messages weren't to great big lists of people, and clearly weren't spam. But while I got lots of "OK, I'll do it!" email, I got almost nothing of the sort "Sorry, I can't" -- just silence instead. If people had said "Sorry, I can't", at least then I'd know to go look for another prospective translator for that language.
