When I entered our rooms, I found C. Auguste Dupin lounging in his fauteuil by the window. His eyes were on the paper in his hand, but he seemed to be gazing beyond it in abstracted thought.

"A death?" I asked, smiling, remembering the events of a few days previous.

"Non, mon ami, simply a puzzle, and a rather pretty one. It appears that one M. Tueur, in attempting to improve his Perl, has entrapped himself in a web of conflicting requirements from which he can not extricate himself."

"Better him than me," I observed. "How did this come about?"

"V…

When I entered our rooms in Paris after a day on the boulevards, I found C. Auguste Dupin at his desk contemplating a scrap of paper. "A problem?" I asked.

"A death. And a rather gruesome one, n'est-ce pas?" he replied, handing me the paper. On it I saw:

$ perl -e '%h = map { "-$_" => 1 } qw{ foo bar };'

Not enough arguments for map at -e line 1, near "} qw{ foo bar }"

syntax error at -e line 1, near "} qw{ foo bar }"

Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

Well, a /users/tom_wyant/2012/01/index.html