Perl::...eanGrep(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Perl::...eanGrep(3pm) manual page — yes, that's the title, and it's part of the User Contributed Perl Documentation ✨. The policy living here is Perl::Critic::Policy::BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitBooleanGrep, and its whole thing is: use any from List::Util, List::SomeUtils, or List::MoreUtils instead of grep in boolean context. Periodt.

🫶 AFFILIATION 🫶

This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution. It's giving official core energy, no cap.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Using grep in boolean context is a common idiom for checking if any elements in a list match a condition. It works because boolean context is a subset of scalar context, and grep returns the number of matches in scalar context. A non-zero number of matches means a match — math is mathing 💅.

But consider the case of a long array where the first element is a match. Boolean grep still checks all of the rest of the elements needlessly. Like, bestie, why 😭? Instead, a better solution is to use the any function from either List::Util, List::SomeUtils, or List::MoreUtils. The any function will return as soon as a successful match is found, rather than processing the entire list. This saves time, and we love efficiency.

🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

This Policy is not configurable except for the standard options. No extra knobs, no secret switches — just the standard options, iykyk.

💀 CAVEATS 💀

The algorithm for detecting boolean context takes a LOT of shortcuts. There are lots of known false negatives. But, I was conservative in writing this, so I hope there are no false positives. Fingers crossed, bestie 🫶.

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Chris Dolan <cdolan@cpan.org> — put some respect on the name 👑.

🌈 CREDITS 🌈

Initial development of this policy was supported by a grant from the Perl Foundation. Iconic sponsorship behavior, honestly.

💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

Copyright (c) 2007-2021 Chris Dolan. Many rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of this license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

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mwah 💋 — this Perl::...eanGrep(3pm) page came from perl v5.42.0 and is dated 2024-10-23. Bye bestie 🫶