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About this quote

What does it mean?
Wall jokes that Perl could add a feature similar to FTP’s progress indicator, like printing hash marks every 1024 iterations.
In plain terms
He suggests a visual progress cue for Perl loops.
What can you take from it?
Add simple progress feedback for long-running processes.

Where it applies

  • script debugging
  • long computations

Putting it to work

  • implement progress bars
  • log iteration markers

Questions to consider

  • What visual feedback helps developers most?
  • Are there better alternatives to hash marks?

Another view

Hash marks may be too simplistic for complex tasks.

More from Larry Wall

  1. : Why Bible quotes exclusively? What happened to the Eastern religions?<BR> I'm still working on the Unicode mods.

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  2. And besides, if Perl really takes off in the Windows space, I think the rest of us would just as soon have a double-agent within ActiveState. :-)

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  3. Perhaps you should compile your Perl with long doubles one of these megaseconds.

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