I love Perl.. Do you?

[Rick]

How many of you love Perl so much you want to show it on an international forum?

This might sound like a joke, but I really do appreciate Perl. It's an extremely elegant scripting language, allowing many complex tasks to be done in as little as a single line. Of course, you have to be pretty good at it to take full advantage of it, but it is well worth the effort to learn in depth.

It's parsing abilities are out-of-this-world. Good stuff.

 

[Nodsu]

Ha! That evened up the results quite nicely , it's good to be the first one to reply.

Never uset it - 50%
Heck yeah! - 50%

 

[SuperCheetah]

Rick could you be a little more specific on the capabilities that Perl has and what its strengths are? Being I know very little about the differences between all the vast programming languages out there it would be good for me to know what makes Perl stand out. I've been wanting to get in coding hardcore for a long time, but a combination of school, work, girlfriend, etc. etc. has kept me away from it.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up, I might have to look into Perl. Also, I always hear good things about Python, anyone using it or can fill me in on some details about it???

 

[Didou]

Who's Perl & do you have a picture of her ?

In my CG days ( that would be 2 years ago in network class ), we programmed the CGI scripts in C language.

It sucked that you had to recompile the program & overwrite the one in the CGI-BIN everytime.

I understand Perl is a bit like a .bat file. You can just edit it, save & the new instructions will be used next time.

 

[Rick]

SuperCheetah: Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It's used widely for CGI scripts and can be done in something as simple as in notepad, since you do not have to compile it into EXE format. It might be said that Perl makes a large percent of the web possible.

Perl is also used in Linux/Unix enviroments (natively) to automate tasks and add functionality.. A bit like a BAT file in Windows, only it is far more complex and capable.

Whether you find perl useful or not, is a different story. If you are into game programming, Windows applications or other things that come to mind when you think of executables, perl might not be totally for you. You'll have to make your own decision on what you want. Many people prefer a language more like C++ for general purposes.

Some strengths of Perl are:

• It has a wide user base and a plethora of documentation and tutorials avialable
• Although it may look difficult, it is actually designed to be simple to learn
• There are many similiarities between Perl's syntax and C's.
• It's usually faster than run-of-the-mill scripting languages
• No compilers needed.. It's a scripting language. All you need is a text editor.
• Perl is free and heavily supports the open source community
• It has a strong coorelation with databases, such as SQL and Oracle.
• Perl has amazing sorting, searching, replacement and pattern matching features. It is the master of all that is text.
• Perl is extremely flexible, allowing no two people to approach the same problem twice. There's a billion different ways to solve something, allowing you to develop your own style
• The language allows you to do very complex tasks in a very short amout of lines. Perl is probably one of the most efficient languages, code-wise.

 

[SuperCheetah]

Thanks a million Rick!!! Hey, maybe you can give me a little help on my other post in the Programming Corner??? You seem to be good at programming unlike myself, and I need lots of help.

 

[guyferd]

Which one?

haaa... this topic is cool... but I never used it..