For me, it was either Perl or an icky bass-ackward pipe-laden awk/sed/regex unmaintainable bastion. OK, I couldn't get rid of the regex. While I'll not be entering the Obfuscated Perl contest anytime soon, I think Perl is much easier to understand for a "traditional" programmer (Assembly, BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, and a little C). I bought O'Reilly's "Learning Perl", and most of what I needed to do was in the book as an example.
Also, on scant nights I've even been rolling my own KISS-method Perl/Tk OEM replacement. Sorry Jared, but sometimes I like GUIs! :) Rich Rich Jesse System/Database Administrator [EMAIL PROTECTED] Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA -----Original Message----- <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 1:40 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Cary.... I once thought I wanted to do some Perl coding... So I bought a book and started to play with it. It made my head bleed... literally I had little droplets of blood emerging from my head.... They rushed me to the hospital and put me in the Perl ward where I languished for days on IV's of Mountain Dew and pulverized Ritz crackers..... it was close. In my mind there is nothing obvious about Perl, this coming from and old C coder who did pointers and linked lists in his sleep years ago. I don't know, maybe I was having a bad day and it's time to get my "learning Perl" book out again.... Anyone else feel that way about Perl or am I a lone wolf in a Perl world? RF -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Jesse, Rich INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).