Perl: what is it good for (my opinions...)

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/AA]

As quoted from <818 at cadlab.sublink.ORG> by martelli at cadlab.sublink.ORG (Alex Martelli):
+---------------
| in sh, awk, sed, tr, etc, and C, like I did, the task is made easier.  For
| somebody who has never programmed before, Rexx may be an easier beginner's
| language - more word-oriented, less funny-squiggle symbols... or ABC... 
+---------------

Or Python --- although I personally have problems taking seriously a language
where indentation is significant.  (1/2 :-)

+---------------
| :And most important, can I maintain somebody else's Perl code easily, unlike C?
| No, if you can't maintain a person's code in C, I doubt you'll have much of an
| advantage in maintaining Perl code.  Maintenance has many dimensions to it,
+---------------

...or any other language, for that matter.  The language doesn't exist that
can't be obfuscated, although there are languages which make it harder (i.e.
Python, with that indentation-is-significant business) or easier (APL...)

+---------------
| difficulty to comprehend them, and given perl's much higher coding productivity
| it is quite likely that the Perl code will do a little bit more, since it
| will have been SO easy for the programmer to roll that little extra bit in!
+---------------

Which can be good (the programmer is less tempted to omit special cases that
doen't seem to be needed but may cause things to break in the future) or bad
(creeping featurism).

Six on one hand, a half dozen on the other.  But I use Perl because it lets me
get things done quickly and easily --- the most important thing.  (...now if
only the load average didn't go from 0.6 to 6.0 while running my ACCELL
Makefile generator in Perl....)

++Brandon
-- 
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