scripting languages...

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2006-04-26 19:41, Gary Kline <kline at tao.thought.org> wrote:
>
> Hi People,
> I am NOT trying to start any kind of flame debate, but would
> like to know what real advantage perl has over the newer
> so-called all-in-one language, ch.   (Other than the obvious
> fact that there are literally billions of lines of perl existant.)

Don't you really mean ``C#'' by writing ``ch''?

Perl seems ubiquitous these days.  Every operating system I regularly
have to use (Linux, BSD or Solaris, in my case) has a Perl
implementation that works the same way 90% of the time.  When it
doesn't, there's almost certainly a CPAN module that does the trick.

    $ uname -v
    FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT #0: Thu Apr 20 06:26:59 EEST 2006     \
    build at gothmog.pc:/home/build/obj/home/build/src/sys/GOTHMOG
    $ perl --version | grep '^This'
    This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i386-freebsd-64int

    $ uname -a
    SunOS XXXX 5.10 Generic_118844-28 i86pc i386 i86pc
    $ perl --version | grep '^This'
    This is perl, v5.8.4 built for i86pc-solaris-64int

    $ uname -a
    SunOS XXXX 5.10 Generic_118822-27 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V240
    $ perl --version | grep '^This'
    This is perl, v5.8.4 built for sun4-solaris-64int

    $ uname -a
    Linux XXXX 2.4.26 #1 SMP Thu May 6 23:04:59 EEST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
    $ perl --version | grep '^This'
    This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi

    $ uname -a
    Linux XXXX 2.6.10 #1 Thu Dec 30 03:01:16 EET 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
    $ perl --version | grep '^This'
    This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi

The biggest advantage of Perl for me right now is that ``A Fairly Modern
Version is Just There(TM)'', wherever I have to work :)