I think the main reason I like Perl is also the main reason I liked (*gasp*) the BASIC interface on my Commodore VIC-20: easy prototyping.
When I start the bulk of my Perl scripts, it's to "scratch an itch." I start, right from the command line, with an icky, hack one-liner. If I can do it in under ~200 characters, it stays a one-liner, with all my editing, testing, etc., occuring right in the terminal. Only once it becomes a) truly useful, or b) big do I bother with things like firing up Emacs, adding in comments, making it flow better, look pretty, etc. And that's probably why a lot of one-liners look as gross as they do: they were never meant to look pretty, they were meant to do whatever the whim-of-the-moment was for the "guy|gal" writing it. Does this make it "better?" Well, in a sense, yes: it's almost seductively easy to start something from the command line. I never even bothered learning sed or awk, 'cause Perl, while taking a weeee little more overhead, Just Does It. Does it make it "worse?" Again, yes: it's almost too easy to fire up something that could rapidly become a quagmire if care/documentation isn't used -- especially if it has to be touched by someone other than the author. Perl: the duct-tape of the SysAdmin. Once again, as with almost all computer stuff, "YMMV". And that's really the bottom line. $.02, -Ken _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
