The backend Perl code must conform to the following style guidelines. If you find any code which doesn't conform, please fix it. These requirements are intended to maintain consistent, organized, professional code.
Proper indentation is very important. Just because the code lines up properly in your editor of choice, does not mean it will line up properly for someone else working on the project. This can be very annoying. These requirements will prevent this.
Tabs
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Tabs should be used to indent all code blocks. Spaces should never be used to indent code blocks. Mixing tabs and spaces results in misaligned code blocks for other developers who prefer different indentation settings. Consider the following code block which is indented with all tabs (shown with and without whitespaces):
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Indented properly with tabs. | Code is lined up properly. | Indentation width changed to 8. |
Now consider a situation where another developer is using an editor which is configured to indent using spaces by default. The developer makes changes to 1 of the lines:
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Indented incorrectly with a mix of | Code appears lined up to the | Code is not lined up for other |
A mix of tabs and spaces is only preferred in order to indent sections of code which span multiple lines but is not an entire block between curly braces. The following example illustrates this:
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Everything in the notify command is indented with a single tab. | Code is lined up properly and easy to read. |
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The editor's indentation with is changed to 8. | The code remains lined up properly and easy to read. |
meaningful
No caps unless class var
use underscores
No caps!
Use underscores
if($total_hours >= 13 && $diff_hours >= 23 && $diff_minutes >= 55){
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Comment as much as sanely possible!
There should always be at least 1 space between the # character and the beginning of the comment. This makes it a little easier to read multi-line comments:
No | Yes |
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#Comments are your friend, they help | # Comments are your friend, they help |
No | Yes | OK | OK |
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my $m = '00:50:56:12:88:99'; | my $mac_address = '00:50:56:12:88:99'; | for (my $loop = 0; $loop<=10; $loop++) { | for (my $i = 0; $i<=10; $i++) { |
No | Yes | No | Yes |
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my $ip_addr; | my $ip_address; | sub get_comp_name { | sub get_computer_name { |
No | Yes | No | Yes |
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sub getcomputername { | sub get_computer_name { | my $endtime; | my $end_time; |
No | Yes |
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sub updateRequestState { | sub update_request_state { |
No | Yes |
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my $requestState; | my $request_state; |
Yes |
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our $SOURCE_CONFIGURATION_DIRECTORY = "$TOOLS/Windows"; |
No | Yes |
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my $ipAddress; | my $ip_address; |
All modules and subroutines must contain a POD documentation block describing what it does. POD is "Plain Old Documentation". For more information, see:
What is POD?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_Old_Documentation
POD syntax guide: http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl/pod/perlpod.pod
Each subroutine should begin with a POD block with the following format:
Code Block |
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#/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
=head2 my_subroutine_name
Parameters : none
Returns : boolean
Description : This is what the subroutine does. These lines must be 80
characters or less. Additional lines must be indented with
spaces, not tabs.
=cut
sub my_subroutine_name {
}
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There are several utilities available for generating formatted POD documentation including pod2text and pod2html. It is a good idea to run a module through one of these utilities before committing updates.
There should be a space between every control/loop keyword and the opening parenthesis:
No | Yes | No | Yes |
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if($loop_count <= 10) { | if ($loop_count <= 10) { | while($loop_count <= 10) { | while ($loop_count <= 10) { |
There should be a space between every closing parenthesis and the opening curly bracket:
No | Yes | No | Yes |
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if ($loop_count <= 10){ | if ($loop_count <= 10) { | while ($loop_count <= 10){ | while ($loop_count <= 10) { |
'else' & 'elsif' statements should be on a separate line after the previous closing curly brace:
No | Yes |
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if ($end_time < $now) { | if ($end_time < $now) { |