perl and other "non-standard" commands

[John W. Eaton]

In article dce at Solbourne.COM (David Elliott) writes:
> 
> Sometimes it isn't appropriate to use commands that aren't standard in
> commercial Unix systems.

Agreed.

> I am working on a project right now that has to run on SunOS 4.0 as
> distributed.  I can't assume that the customer will have perl, GNU
> awk, or even nawk, even though any of these would make my project
> significantly easier.  When Sun decides to make these standard (soon
> for nawk, who knows for the others), then I'll be able to use them.

Well, I don't get it.  If GNU awk would make things easier, why not
distribute it with your product?  You don't have to wait for Sun to do
it for you.

> Certainly, if you're going to write software that works on a specific
> set of systems that you can control the contents of, use perl, GNU
> awk, and anything else you can get your hands on to do a better job.

Didn't you just say that your target was a specific system/OS?  GNU
awk is not universal, but it is *free*.  Just distribute it.
 
> -- 
> David Elliott		dce at Solbourne.COM
> 			...!{boulder,nbires,sun}!stan!dce

-- 
John Eaton
chpf127 at emx.utexas.edu
Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas  78712