[ILUG] When to use Perl

[Waider]

At Tuesday, 31 July 2001, Padraig Brady <Padraig at antefacto.com> wrote:
>I have to concur. Python is just great. Python also has the added
>advantage of being a good "web" language, so Python nicely replaces
>Perl+PHP+...
>So in my opinion, C/C++ & shell & Python are the only general
>purpose languages you need.
>
>Padraig.

Hurrah! Let's start a "my favourite scripting language" war!

Python is no more a web language than Perl. Python's 're module' is, I
presume, the equivalent of using Perl's built-in regular expressions.
Both are approximately equivalent to using C or C++ with Henry Spencer's
regexp libs, and if you want web, Tom Boutell's CGI libs.

If you know C, Perl is probably a shorter learning step than Python,
regardless of whether you consider either scripting language inelegant,
messy, badly designed, etc. Any other reasoning is more likely to 
be preferred-language opinion rather than technical opinion, since 
both are
powerful, object-oriented, extensible, web enabled, re-enabled, chrome-
plated, supercharged, turbo-driven, and dolphin-friendly.

You could also try TCL. Or Java with a decent string-manip library 
(particularly if you don't have to write the library, and you're 
familiar with C++). Or Emacs lisp. Or, heck, shell scripting with 
awk, sed, and a few well-chosen pipelines.

Waider. I happen to prefer Perl, but that's no reason to beat people 
with it.
-- 
waider at waider.ie / Yes, it /is/ very personal of me.

http://www.emailreader.co.uk/ - because firewalls suck.




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