Perl::...anyArgs(3pm)

💅 NAME (yes bestie, it's literally called that)

Perl::Critic::Policy::Subroutines::ProhibitManyArgs — aka the "too many arguments" policy, and honestly? it's giving concerned bestie energy 🫶

This page lives in the Perl::...anyArgs(3pm) slot of your man pages (User Contributed Perl Documentation, no less 👑), and it's about one very specific vibe check: your subs are taking way too many args.

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✨ AFFILIATION ✨

Okay so this Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution. Like, it ships with the gang 💖 no extra install, she's already there.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Subroutines that expect large numbers of arguments are hard to use — and why? because programmers routinely have to go look at the documentation just to remember the order of those arguments 😭 like bestie, if I gotta open a doc file to remember whether it's ($name, $age, $haircolor) or ($age, $name, $haircolor), something has gone wrong.

Many arguments is often a sign that a subroutine should be refactored, or that an object should be passed to the routine. Periodt. 🔥 That's the whole thesis.

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🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

By default, this policy allows up to 5 arguments without warning. Five! That's the threshold, that's the vibe check line ⭐

Wanna change this threshold? Pop some entries in a .perlcriticrc file like this:

[Subroutines::ProhibitManyArgs]
max_arguments = 6

And if you want to ignore $self or $class in your argument count — as long as they're the first argument — use:

[Subroutines::ProhibitManyArgs]
skip_object = 1

Because $self showing up first is just main character energy and shouldn't be counted against you 🙈 iykyk.

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💀 CAVEATS 💀

Real talk, some limits:

• PPI doesn't currently detect anonymous subroutines, so we don't check those. Not a bug, just a "not yet" — this should just work when PPI gains that feature 🌈
• We don't check for @ARG, the alias for @_ from English.pm. That's deprecated anyway, so like… we're not gonna waste our time 💅

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🦋 CREDITS 🦋

Initial development of this policy was supported by a grant from the Perl Foundation. Shoutout, fr fr 🙌

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Chris Dolan <cdolan@cpan.org> — iconic behavior, we stan 💜

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🍓 COPYRIGHT 🍓

Copyright (c) 2007-2023 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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ngl, "Many rights reserved" is such a serve. Not all the rights. Many of them. The good ones 💅

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And that's the whole page bestie! ✨ This cutie was rendered from perl v5.42.0 on 2024-10-23 — so if you're reading this on some other version, hi from the past, hope your subs have fewer args now 💖🎀🫶