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.

Indentation

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

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):

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:

A mix of tabs and spaces is only acceptable in order to indent sections of code which spans multiple lines but is not an entire block between curly braces.  The following example illustrates this:

Comments

Variable Names

meaningful

No caps unless class var

use underscores

Subroutine Names

No caps!

Use underscores

POD Documentation

Curly Brackets, Parenthesis

if($total_hours >= 13 && $diff_hours >= 23 && $diff_minutes >= 55){

If/Else Statements

Heredocs