ap

[Tom Christiansen]

>From the keyboard of byron at archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis):
:In article <1991Jun05.013632.3198 at convex.com> tchrist at convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
:>
:>I don't really see what this thread is doing in comp.unix.shell, when 
:>to my ears it sounds a lot more like a candidate for alt.religion.computers
:>instead.   I've directed followups there, which is where people like 
:>to argue about things like this.  
:
:I'm sorry, you turned it into a religious argument. I started out asking
:for comments and ideas. OK, I did so by talking in an inflammatory fashion
:about perl, but that was not my *primary* purpose.

:So, any reasonable comments about ap, or any alternative to perl for that
:matter, are still welcome. And yes, I think comp.unix.shell is a reasonable
:forum for this discussion, since there is no comp.unix.command.interpreter.

I read unqualified inflammatory comments about "disgrace to UNIX" and
"nauseating", ones without reasoned commentary about why these things were
said.  When I see fire, I get heated.  Just my nature.  It didn't sound
so much like a request for a ideas as much as it did a bashing session.

Larry's already posted at length about some of the background on why perl
turned out as it did.  I don't know whether that proved illuminating for
you or not.

If you'd like to fill in the details about what you want in a language, or
perhaps what still bothers you about perl, then maybe someone can find a
language to fit your bill.  There are a plethora of languages already
out there.  I'm not sure we really need another.  You could always just
use ksh or rc or something if you want a UNIX command interpreter.

I happen to know some excellent C programmers who do not use perl.  I
didn't mean to imply that these went hand in hand.  I just meant that they
probably could if they wanted to.  In at least some cases, they simply
don't want to, and it's because they consider perl an "unclean" language.
That's fine for them.  I just have to much to do in too little time to
worry about the tool being from the grey market, as it were.


--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist at convex.com	convex!tchrist
	    "Perl is to sed as C is to assembly language."  -me