for perl wizards.

[Matthew Seaman]

Lars Eighner wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Oct 2009, Warren Block wrote:

>> That's twice now people have suggested sed instead of perl.  Why?  For 
>> many uses, perl is a better sed than sed.  The regex engine is far 
>> more powerful and escapes are much simpler.

> Because sed is stable and perl is getting all OO and flaky.  Sed will work
> like sed for so long as there are unix-like systems.  It is not clear that
> perl is going to continue to work.

What utter tosh.  Perl's Object Oriented features have been in place for years
and, believe it or not, perl programs written for Perl 4 still continue to work
with little or no modification under the very latest perl release, right alongside
the stuff written yesterday that uses all the very latest features.  That's a damn
sight better track record than almost any other actively developed language you 
could mention.

There's nothing that forces you to program Perl in an OO style -- procedural
style works just fine.  You could probably make a fair stab at writing in a
purely functional style (like Ocaml) if you felt that way inclined.

I get very irritated with the current vogue in certain quarters for doing down
Perl.  So what if you personally don't like coding in Perl?  No one is holding a
gun to your head and making you do it.  Write in what ever language suits you,
but don't try and force me to conform to your prejudices.

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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