Some folks may say that it is _the_ scripting language for Un*x. :}
Beauty of Perl is that it runs many places and the folks porting it to different
platforms are now working to make your scripts as portable as possible.
I have Perl scripts that run on Unix, Mac, and WinNT.
Perl is not primarily a Web programming tool, though it has become one of the most
frequently used languages on the Web. Perl is a general language that can be used for
system administration, text manipulation, database interface, and Web sites.
There are any number of other interesting languages out there (Python, Ruby, Squeak,
Scheme, et. al.) that also have their following. Perl is probably the most popular at
this particular point in time with many on-line resources, books, tutorials, training
sessions etc. Fairly easy to learn as well.
Ray
>As regards Perl. I know nothing about it at this point. Would this be a
>good tool to learn to enable me to do scripting in UNIX as well as Win32?
>Is it comparable (in capability) to VMS DCL? Or is it used primarily for
>web programming?
>
>Jim
>RH 6.1
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
>> Behalf Of Benjamin Scott
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 1:35 AM
>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: Re: hello once again and perl
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, Chris Bourassa wrote:
>> > I am planning on learning (at least start) Perl. How different is Linux
>> > Perl compared to (yuch) Perl for Win32.
>>
>> I'm going to respectfully disagree with the people here who
>> have stated that
>> Perl on Win32 isn't like Perl on POSIX. My last job involved
>> creation of a
>> web-based training system. Platform portability was absolutely
>> critical -- it
>> had to run on everything from Win32 to most flavors of Unix to
>> Novell Netware.
>> We chose Perl precisely because the differences between platforms are few.
>>
>> I think the difficulty people have is that they try to do Unixy
>> things with
>> Perl on Win32. Of course, they don't work. But if you don't try
>> to do those
>> Unixy things, Perl does just fine. This usually isn't an issue,
>> as most of
>> the time, if you're trying to do a Unixy thing, you're trying to
>> do something
>> specific to Unix, and it simply won't apply to Win32.
>>
>> You can take a look at the "perlport" man page to read about writing
>> portable Perl, and to determine just what is and isn't supported
>> by perl on
>> various platforms. Thus, you can avoid unsupported functions in your
>> adventures on Win32. If you're interested in writing cross-platform Perl,
>> there are Perl modules to help you sort all this out at run time.
>>
>> There are lots of nice modules to interface with the Win32 API.
>> Of course,
>> these modules don't work on Unix, just like Unix stuff doesn't
>> work on Win32,
>> but nobody complains about that. Go figure. :)
>>
>> I would recommend you download ActivePerl from the
>> http://www.activestate.com site. ActivePerl is the regular Perl
>> distribution,
>> compiled for Win32, and dressed up nicely with an installer,
>> documentation,
>> etc. It also includes a lot of Win32 modules and extensions
>> right out of the
>> box.
>>
>> > Also, is there anyone in the Newport NH area (within a reasonable
>> > distance) that is fairly knowledgeable in Perl that might want to give
>> > some lessons/tutorials.
>>
>> There is lots of good information on Perl available online. Check out
>> http://www.perl.com for starters. If you prefer dead trees, O'Reilly
>> (http://www.ora.com) has some excellent books on Perl.
>> "Programming Perl" is
>> by Larry Wall, the guy who cursed^H^H^H^H^H^Hblessed us with Perl
>> in the first
>> place. It is good, but a bit heavy-duty for a beginner.
>> "Learning Perl" is
>> geared more towards someone learning Perl for the first time and
>> is very good.
>> You might be interested in "Learning Perl on Win32 Systems", although I've
>> heard it dilutes the original "Learning Perl" without adding much
> > Win32 stuff.
>>
>> Hope this helps!
>>
>> --
>> Ben Scott
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
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>
>
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