On Fri, 4 Aug 2006 09:07:35 -0400, striker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I agree with Chip and have a recommendation. Since you have been > using Vim, Perl will be much easier to learn. > A very good beginning book on Perl is located at http:// > learn.perl.org/library/beginning_perl/ . It is not as > thorough as the 'Camel' book, but has a lot of good info. and the > price is right! > > When I first began studying programming Perl was over my head and > seemed very difficult. I found it incredibly easy to learn Perl. I was faced with a large data-reformatting program written in uncommented C that needed to be adapted to a new input format. I started to work on it but it soon became clear that fixing the program would take a couple of weeks. I had vague memories of a language named Perl that was good for that sort of text processing, so at the weekend I went into London, bought the Camel book, skimmed through it on the train home, went into work on Monday and rewrote the entire application in Perl. Not only did it take me less than half the time to rewrite the code as it would have taken to fix it, but the Perl version ran three times faster than the original C. > After using Vim for only > a short time, Perl all of a sudden made a lot more sense. An excellent grasp of regular expressions is essential to get the best out of both. It's a pity that regular expressions look so much like line noise that most people are scared away from them, because regular expressions are where most of the power of both Perl and Vim is to be found. Perl 6 has tried to create a new type of regular expression that is clearer and easier to use, but to the novice it still looks like line noise only now it takes up twice as much room. -- Matthew Winn
