(I think I've got the attributions right.)


On Fri, 11 May 2001, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:

> On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 05:02:39PM +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > 
> > Speaking as someone that has often had to work on C, Perl, Verilog and VHDL
> > at the same time I can say that clearly visible differences are not without
> > merit.
> 
> Yea, verily.  I have more than once stared for more seconds than I
> care to admit being completely baffled at why my C compiler doesn't
> appreciate
> 
>       print "foo = $foo\n";


        Actually, I recently bamboozled my boss with something
similar.  We were having a "weird code" contest, where he would scribble
down something and ask what it did and then it was my turn.  We had been
doing all the examples in C++, and then I said:

        "Ok, this one has a nasty trick to it, but once you see the trick
it's easy.  What does this do?"

        And I showed him the following:

                while(<>) {
                        print;
                }

        When he couldn't get it, I told him what it did and asked him to
explain how it worked.  When he couldn't, I reminded him that there was a
"nasty trick" and told him that the trick was that it wasn't C++ code, it
was Perl code.  

        Dave

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