Item 112. Use Perl Critic

Perl is (in)famous for its flexibility and expressiveness. A long-time mantra of Perl programmers is, “There’s More Than One Way To Do It” (TMTOWTDI). This flexibility is great; however, sometimes you have to reel it in and follow a few coding standards. Having rules for what is allowed and what isn’t can be handy when you are working with a team of other programmers. It can keep people from writing code that is hard to read and make your code base a much more pleasant place. Even when you are working on a project alone, it never hurts to have a few rules in place that keep the look and feel of the code consistent.

Having rules is one thing; enforcing them is another. You can set up agile methods, code reviews, and pair programming, which are all good things but still leave room for human error. What you really need is an automatic system that can review your code and tell you where it is breaking your rules.