Re: [Hampshire] Why I like Perl

> The learning curve so far has been relatively steep, but once through the
> Llama book and practicing with small scripts now after several months
> slowly picking my way through the syntax I can read it and make
> subroutines work and play with functions, manipulate context and regex's.
> Coding is much smoother than in Bash and for the approx. 600 lines I have
> just written Bash would have become too cumbersome. I really like the
> warnings and use of strict pragma, the feedback has been understandable
> and very decipherable for debugging. I also like the syntax, it's easy on
> the eye, curly, and lends itself to readability and fits in well with my C
> knowledge.

I'll probably be the only one who says this, but I'm not a perl fan.

As a replacement for something like bash, I think perl is a great thing.
However for applications I hate perl! It is far to easy to write perl code
that is impossible to read, and some of those magic perl tricks can make
it even worse! There are so many nasty horrible things you can do with
perl, and far to many people use them ;) (usually all of them at once if
they possibly can!)

I have had horrible experiences of trying to use, maintain and extend a
very large testing system written entirely in perl, the thing was a
nightmare.

For a quick script, especially those requiring parsing of log files etc.
perl is wonderful but I would never use perl to writing something that was
important or large or intended to be maintained and expanded on in the
future.

I think perl is a good tool, just often mis-used for things where it
really isn't the best tool for the job.