Wicked Cool Perl Scripts

#37 Dead Code Locator

There's an urban legend about a group of programmers who were working on a government contract changing some code from one version of Jovial to another. One of them came to a function with obscure and very confused logic, so he decided that instead of just mechanically translating the code, he would see how the function was used and then perhaps write a better one.

Imagine his surprise when he discovered that the function was not called at all.

So he went to his boss and said, "This function is never used. We can eliminate it."

"We already know that," responded the boss. "But the cost of doing the paperwork to eliminate this function is far greater than the cost of converting it. So go back and update it."

The programmer ...