Re: Perl is one of the best known scripting languages in the world (was: Re: How to print column heading only in SQL plus)

On 15.09.2013 01:13, Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 21:37:19 +0000, Mladen Gogala wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 19:05:45 +0100, Eric wrote:
>>
>>> If I write Perl, no-one else on the site can understand it - sometimes
>>> I'm not sure I can. And it doesn't officially exist anyway, even though
>>> our database servers tend to have two installations, the one in oracle
>>> and the one in Data Protector (formerly omniback).
>>
>> They can only take Perl from my cold, dead hand!
>
> I have thought about leaving this at that "in your face" one-liner, but
> then decided against that. Perl is one of the best known scripting
> languages in the world.

I'd say: unfortunately so.

> My post doesn't say just "use Perl", what I'm advocating is using the
> right tool for the job.

That great advice unfortunately is often ignored. Then again, if you do not know the best tool for a job and can't afford to find it then what you typically do is turn to the tools you know best. We're all human...

> However, Perl is a great scripting language which results in neat, clean
> and understandable scripts

I would agree that you _can_ write clean and understandable code in Perl - like in any language. But Perl does not encourage that, not at all. There is so much syntax clutter, special cases and the regexp engine now has become insane.

> and can be used as a glue between Oracle and
> OS. In contrast with shell, Perl has very decent mechanisms for working
> with arrays, both integer-based and associative, it has excellent file
> handling mechanisms, signal handling, argument parsing and debugging
> capabilities, far beyond the level of any shell.

And it lacks a clear syntax as well as object orientation - in Perl 5 at least (even Larry said so IIRC).

> Above all other,
> programming in Perl is fun. Programming shell scripts is working on the
> chain gang.

:-) I faintly remember that it was indeed fun coding Perl in the days I did. But since I met Ruby (*) I never looked back: coding Ruby is even more fun and since 1.9.0 it has an extraordinary regexp engine which IMO better balances features with simplicity than Perl's does.

Kind regards

        robert

(*) My name is not an alias for a former Italian prime minister.

-- 
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
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