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Should I learn Perl

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:01

On my brand new Fedora 13 I notice that a lot of stuff is managed trough Perl. I'm always been curious about it, but I never watched at it, while I'm pretty good in many other languages (like C, C++, Java and Python).

What do you think about it? Is it worthy to learn it?

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:03

Why don't you try it and find out?

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:12

>>2
Because my time is precious. I trust your judgement, and before starting to learn something (which requires me time) I'd like to know what you think about it.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:13

You just want to steal my porn organiser :C

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:14

>>4
But it's Terrible!

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:19

Personally, I learned Perl by tinkering with other people's scripts. I didn't just decide to learn Perl and start reading all the books and stuff.

Having said that, there's A LOT of material out there that will help you learn it if you chose to. There's like a dozen tutorials out there that teach you how to do something in many different ways, so there's always something for everybody. That's how Perl is.

I use Perl for pretty much everything. I would try it if I were you, you might like it.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 9:34

>>6
Thanks for your advice.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 10:43

>>7
Thanks for your anus

Name: VIPPER 2010-09-07 11:44

>>1
DO IT! NOW!

JEWS

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 11:45

DO IT! JEW!

NOWS

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 11:53

I'd hate to say it, but better perl than C++.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 11:59

>>11
+1 True

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 15:35

>>1
Perl if fun. Perl 6 is even funnier though, if you don't need die-hard software now, and like experimental/exciting compiler behaviour, try on. It feels a lot better than Perl 5, not to mention PyFOIC or something else.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 18:23

>>13

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 20:19

Learn everything.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 21:12

It has one of the most complicated grammars, up there with C++. At least C++'s grammar has a BNF form. Perl doesn't.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-07 22:30

Perl is PHP++. Avoid it.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 2:41

>>17 is an idiot.  Avoid her.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 7:20

>>17
Have you read your The History of Programming Languages: PHP Edition today?

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 22:57

Just do it man. Perl is like duct tape for computing. Its a TERRIFIC tool, not the best "programming language" though, but is still useful (Search for Perl Catalyst, or just browse CPAN for 10 minutes)

I can code faster in perl than any other language, for _quick solutions_ to real problems. I think that the time you spend in programming is (most of the time) more important that the program speed.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 23:09

>>20
I agree. Perl is a fantastic tool for quick scripts and utilities and the language is very flexible.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 23:31

>>20,21
I wish people would stop repeating that as if it were true.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-08 23:49

>>22

Perl is a perfectly fine tool for anything smaller than about five lines -- much like how sed is highly sufficient for simple find and replace operations, but stupid for anything more complex than that.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 0:18

20 here...

>>22
It is true in my everyday work. We do integrate lots of systems in the bank i work for, all the asynchronous data interfaces are in plain text. With perl is very easy, even with the old version we use (5.8)

to >>23
We wrote a perl library in 2 months for parsing and filtering huge text files using our own xml flavor (tailored to our needs and an existing, propietary, xml format). It's roughly 1000 lines, and is very fast, because all filters are converted to calls to grep, cat, head, tail and awk. It was veeery easy to integrate those. Most of the code is for xml interpretation and basic validation.

Perl _is_ the right tool for systems integration. Not the right tool for programs < 5 lines.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 0:38

>>24
very fast, because all filters are converted to calls to grep, cat, head, tail and awk

EWW EWW EWW EWW

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 1:13

>>23
This is because you can express anything in Perl in five lines or less.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 1:23

>>24
"our own xml flavor" ... "grep, cat, head, tail, and awk"...

Utter trash.  (1) If you are using regular expressions to process XML, you are almost certainly doing something wrong.  (2) If your program is faster now that you send string operations to separate processes, your libraries are broken.

Perl as a language is an utter mess, and as an implementation leaves a lot to be desired.  Perl's REs have had notably poor performance -- for a language that is so closely associated with REs, that sucks.  The good news about Perl is that it does work, and it sits in a convenient niche where shell scripts aren't good enough but C is too painful. 

What's the point of learning Perl?  Python and Ruby are here now, they're available on your production server, and they are less broken.  Perl's day has come and gone.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 3:09

>>27
(just fyi. not trying to argument more about it) i dont use regexps directly to parse xml. I just use XML::Parser for reading the xml that defines the filter. Our xml filters are small. The data we read is big, but is heavily filtered with the use of grep and others.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 3:39

>>27
and it sits in a convenient niche where shell scripts aren't good enough but C is too painful.
That niche only ever existed in the minds of people who never bothered to learn shell scripting properly. Even Bash is a surprisingly advanced and powerful programming language.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 4:50

>>29
and is also a fucking mess

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 4:53

>>30
Yeah, but PERL is even messier.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 5:01

Perl sucks.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 8:30

>>24
the old version we use (5.8)
I chuckled, thanks!

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 10:57

>>24
huge text files using our own xml flavor
If you're using xml as a database you are most definitely doing it very wrong.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 11:53

>>34
If you're using xml as a database you are most definitely doing it very wrong.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 13:52

There are two kinds of database problems.
1) The database is small. The problem is: you are using a database at all.
2) The database is massive. No one can help you and you'll have to constantly work with support teams from several disciplines.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 14:15

>>36
Any persistent data store on disk, say, a base for the data to hang out, is a database. Your words smell bad.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 14:21

>>37
All life is just a collection of atoms. Way to define a word into irrelevancy.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 14:40

>>36
Addendum:
3) Your database is otherwise manageable, but you are using XML.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 14:45

perl 5.8.8, released 2006

4 years old is old enough i think to call it 'old', aside that the current version is 5.12.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 15:30

>>40
Oh sorry, Lisper here.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 16:34

>>27
Except both Python and Ruby are slower than Perl.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 16:35

>>27
Except that both Python and Ruby are slower than Perl.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 16:40

>>42
he writes programs that depend on speed in interpreted languages
he doesn't sage
he double-posts
Fuck the fuck off.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 16:43

>>44
If you manage to get your server provider to install a Haskell compiler, please let me know.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:16

>>44
>Implying everyone should sage.
>Implying speed doesn't matter even in scripting languages
>Implying one of those posts isn't just an ass copying the previous

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:19

>>46
>ass
Someone doesn't know Shiichan's peculiarities...!

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:22

>>47
Do you honestly thing I give a shit about Shiichan's retarded bbcode system?

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:24

>>48
No, fucknugget. Every so often posts don't appear as soon as the main page reloads. Also, that's not BBCode. Also, please sage.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:25

>>49
But I don't want to sage. So suck it.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 17:28

I miss sagetank.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-09 19:03

>>44,46,48,50
Both of you are highly worthless persons who should go back to /b/, please.

Name: Anonymous 2010-09-10 1:47

>>52
"highly worthless" is an interesting phrase.

Name: Anonymous 2010-11-28 10:36

Name: Anonymous 2010-12-17 1:24

Are you GAY?
Are you a NIGGER?
Are you a GAY NIGGER?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!

Name: Anonymous 2010-12-20 14:59

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-03 4:47

Don't change these.
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