Who should attend:
All Perl programmers. Basic familiarity with Perl is required.

What you will learn:
Style and technique tips that will make your programs easier to understand and easier to maintain and modify. We will look at several examples of real Perl programs and examine their flaws, drawbacks, and limitations, including:

• Performance problems
• Surprising behavior
• Poor layout
• Fragility
• Error handling
• Maintenance nightmares
• Portability problems

Often just a few small changes can make a program much more powerful while at the same time _reducing_ the amount of code.

We will also see a number of 'red flags': Early warning signs that you might see in your own code that almost always indicate that something is wrong or should be done differently.

Criticism will be incisive but kind, in the style of Mark's well-received 'Program Repair Shop and Red Flags' articles from www.perl.com. Attendees are invited to submit their own code for review during the class; please mail it to mjd-tpc-5-repair+@plover.com no later than July 1 2001.

Read more about this tutorial on the O'Reilly Network.