On Jul 18, 2008, at 15:26, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

>  I put a module Every.pm on CPAN, which lets you do
> 
>  print "hi" if every(5);
> 
>  which will print "hi" once every 5 times it's called.  There's a form
>  for seconds elapsed as well, which will run if N seconds have elapsed.
> 
>  (it came to be with help from c.l.p.misc regulars, it's not just mine)
> 
>  I wonder if:
> 
>  1) there's any chance of including it in the core in some form; I  
>  think
>  it's really useful and the common (if $i % 5 == 0) format has lots of
>  shortcomings;

What would those shortcoming be?  I've never been bothered by that  
idiom. Anyways, I think there need to be a lot better reasons than  
that a single user finds a utility function useful for adding a  
module providing it to the core...

> 
>  2) there's a way to know not just the line, but also the character
>  position of a function call, so we can do
> 
>  if (every(5) || every(6)) {}
> 
>  without resorting to shenanigans like using \5 and \6 or passing a
>  special identifier in addition to the number.

...especially if the function does not even work reliably :(

On the more helpful side; you can get a reference to the number  
passed in by using \$_[0] inside the function.  I still don't think  
you should rely on perl not reusing integer literals passed to  
functions.

--Gisle