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  48     dc:title="Perl::Critic"
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  50     dc:subject="Broadcom"
  51     dc:description="OK, I&apos;m a nerd and I&apos;m pretty passionate about Perl. But in my defense this is my business and my chosen career - it is what I went to school for way back in the day. So I listen to..."
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  58                      <h2 class="date-header">April 11, 2012</h2>
  59                      <a id="a000751"></a>
  60                      <div class="entry" id="entry-751">
  61                         <h3 class="entry-header">Perl::Critic</h3>
  62                         <div class="entry-content">
  63                            <div class="entry-body">
  64                               <p>OK, I'm a nerd and I'm pretty passionate about Perl. But in my defense this is my business and my chosen career - it is what I went to school for way back in the day. So I listen to podcasts about many topics including technology. One podcast I listen to regularly is <a href="http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly">FLOSS Weekly</a> with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_Schwartz">Randal Schwartz</a>. Randal wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Perl-Randal-L-Schwartz/dp/1449303587">Learning Perl</a> among other Perl books and he had on <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~thaljef/">Jeffery Thalhammer</a> who talked about his creation <a href="http://www.perlcritic.org/">Perl::Critic</a>. For those who may be interested the Perl::Critic episode is <a href="http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/189">here</a>.</p>
  65
  66 <p>The easiest way you can try out Perl::Critic by going to <a href="http://www.perlcritic.org/">http://www.perlcritic.org/</a>. You can even evaluate your own Perl scripts by using the Choose File and set your severity level. You can start with gentle but I usually do harsh as that's in the middle.</p>
  67
  68 <p>Perl::Critic is a static analyzer that finds inconsistencies and possible errors in your Perl code as well as tries to enforce best practices as written about in <a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596001735.do">Perl Best Practices</a> by Damian Conway. Perl::Critic is implemented as a CPAN module. There is also a command line (<a href="http://search.cpan.org/%7Eschwigon/Benchmark-Perl-Formance-Cargo-0.03/lib/auto/Benchmark/Perl/Formance/Cargo/PerlCritic/perlcritic">/usr/bin/perlcritic</a>) that allows you to run perlcritic on your code from the command line. But the web page is better because it provides links to explanations of why Perl::Critic thinks what it complains about is a problem as well as tells you how to fix it.</p>
  69
  70 <p>Now, of course, critiquing your code is highly subjective and you may not agree with the rational for why Perl::Critic flags this as a problem. Perl::Critic is very tunable - you can set settings in ~/.perlcriticrc to say "We don't want you, Perl::Critic, to flag this as a problem".</p>
  71
  72 <p>If you use <a href="https://eclipse.org/">Eclipse</a> as your IDE and have <a href="http://www.epic-ide.org/">EPIC, the Eclipse Perl Integration plugin</a>, and have <a href="http://cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a> installed with <a href="http://search.cpan.org/%7Eschwigon/Benchmark-Perl-Formance-Cargo-0.03/lib/auto/Benchmark/Perl/Formance/Cargo/PerlCritic/perlcritic">perlcritic</a> installed too, you can configure Eclipse to use Perl::Critic directly in the editor and flag errors as you code which you can then fix.</p>
  73
  74 <p>For example, you can see the little triangle with "!" in it relates to the line in the Problems tab at the bottom which says that I've defined $value but never used it.</p>
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