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 Sun, 15 Sep 2013 12:03:29 +0200, Robert Klemme wrote:

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

Be that as it may, OO is not high on my priority list. I'm a DBA, most of my tasks are procedural in nature: load this, convert that or produce a report. Hardly a case for OO. Also, I believe that the development community should give the OO paradigm another, rather critical look. OO was supposed to make programming easier but has produced an untold number of poorly documented class libraries, which only increase the complexity of programming, not make it easier. Going through somebody's spaghetti code is about as appealing as going through somebody's class libraries, especially when classes appear to be written under the influence of controlled substances. I've had several such cases. Of course, it all depends on perspective. For a DBA, Perl is the right choice. For a software developer, it's probably not the right choice.

>

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

I've never programmed in Ruby, but the apparent advantage of Perl is the fact that it is everywhere: Windows, HP-UX, AIX or Solaris, among others, not just Linux. Chance is that you will be able to write a Perl script on AIX, without installing any additional software, while there will be a need to install software if you attempt to do the same thing in Ruby or Python.
Also, for the 3rd party tools like Rlib or Sphinx, there are always Perl bindings. There are often no Ruby bindings (Sphinx does have them, RLIB does not).

-- 
Mladen Gogala
The Oracle Whisperer
http://mgogala.byethost5.com