[71] in Back_Bay_LISA
Re: To perl or not to perl?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dominick M. Galang)
Thu Nov 19 12:48:20 1992
From: sandman@bu-it.bu.edu (Dominick M. Galang)
To: bblisa@inset.com
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 12:17:31 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <9211191525.AA16763@garlic.inset.com> from "Adam S. Moskowitz" at Nov 19, 92 10:25:45 am
Adam S. Moskowitz said:
|
|
| Perl, on the other hand, has the advantages of uniformity as well as
| the ability to maintain ``state''. One of the things I often find
| frustrating is the difficulty of maintaining state across pipes, and
| perl avoids this problem by reducing or eliminating the need for
| pipes. However, perl is large, and thus more expensive in term of
| CPU time to start up for a small program. Perl is also more
| difficult to extend as the source code is quite large and
| complicated. Yes, you could extend it via perl scripts, but again,
| that forces you to run perl to use the new tool. Using the
| traditional approach, you simply write a small C program to solve
| the new problem.
|
Disclaimer: I don't know perl so I can't address the comparison issue.
I do, tho, want to address the "not perl" aspect.
I'm from the "old world" with unix experience of just shy of 10 years.
I still use 'csh' even though the world around me is switching to
'tcsh'. I prefer emacs though, I keep myself fluent in vi for times
when I have no choice. And I still use 'sed' and 'awk'.
I don't expect new users to follow my footsteps. I am sure it's as
easy for someone to start with tcsh and perl than to go my route, but
I'm sure when the next hot shell or tool comes around to outmode the
current set, others will see the same dilemma of time vs.
productivity.
I haven't touched perl though, I really should. Same goes for OOP.
The reason I don't keep up with the latest and greatest is frankly, I
am comfortable with what I do know and there is never as much time as
one would like to stay on top. If I can keep up with better
programming methods and still hang on to the tools I use to program, I
think I'm still doing alright. I'll probably have to change sometime
but at least it's not tomorrow.
I guess there's two things that keep me from switching to perl. The
first and foremost is that a base operating system on CD that I needed
to recover a crashed disk doesn't have it (yet). I have to work with
sed, awk and the like. The second is that everyone still knows the
tools I use. If it's good for me and okay for the next person, that's
fine by me.
--
Dominick M. Galang \\ sandman@bu-it.bu.edu ...!bu.edu!sandman
Unix Support // Boston University Information Technology
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