One thing I like about Perl is its versatility. Although it rose to fame as a text manipulation tool, as franki points out, the vast number of modules available these days means that you can use it for almost anything (well, anything you can use a scripting language for - I've not heard of anyone writing a lightning-fast first-person shooter in Perl).Asa Rossoff wrote:
From: "OOzy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Asa Rossoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
..
Which of the scripted languages run fastest, and which use ram most efficiently? The languages I know (just) a bit about are Perl, Python, and Tcl.
It really depends on personal preference. PHP is popular and rich. I don't
know about Perl, Python and Tcl. I think these languages are for gurus. If
I
were you I will go for PHP.
I have some past programming experience, and am not afraid of a challenge for something worthwhile.
My impression is that the currently popular and modern backends for web work
are PHP and Python. Is PHP meant to be used outside of web work?
You can write PHP scritps for admin stuff, but they are slow... the only reason PHP is fast is because it runs inside the web server,
(like mod_perl) PHP is not really good for admin stuff, it was never designed to be used like that. Perl was, in fact a good many of the install screens and tools you saw on install of Mandrake were Perl scripts, and so are some of the tools you use to maintain the box.
I use Perl for large scale web apps. (using a framework and templating system like CGI::Application and HTML::Template) and I also use a ton of small admin scripts to do backend stuff on the boxes.
Python is cool, but I don't know it all that well, Perl is far an away my favorite scripting language, and a look around search.cpan.org will show you why.
Note that although Tk tends to be associated with Tcl, it also works well in Perl. There are other good scripting languages as well; I'm not knocking Python or Ruby, but Perl has the advantages of thousands of dedicated hackers working on it for well over a decade now. It's like the C of scripting languages.
Sir Robin
--
"I'm very into Britney Spears' early work, before she sold out, so mostly her, um, finger painting and macaroni art."
Dawn - BtVS
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Universitesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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