What makes perl so powerful (among other things), is what Larry Wall chose to put into the core syntax of the language: hash tables (aka associative arrays), and pattern matching (regex).
No functions to call, no objects to instantiate, they are just there, in the core syntax, and using them quickly becomes second-nature. There's also the magic variable $_ and a host of other niceties and syntactic sugariness, but you get the idea.


Erik Ableson wrote:

Hmmm - it's more a question of abstraction. Is C's approach to abstracting human ideas into code conducive for solving the problem that you have at hand ? In most cases, the answer is probably not since it works at a very low leve where you're responsible for all sorts of boring (but crucial!) bit and pieces like memory management, input buffers and memory pointer spaces - bleah.

Perl is an excellent compromise between the human and the computer. Perl is exceedingly versatile for certain tasks that don't mind needing a relatively large executable and memory footprint. C is ideal if you want to write a perl interpreter, a device driver, and operating system, a high performace commercial application...

Perl is great for when you have data, and a question and need to get an answer, a repetitive task to automate, and a zillion other things where you just want to plunge into making something work.

If you're getting into bioinformatics, you should check out the O'Reilly book "Perl for Bioinformatics". A niche bestseller but it sounds like it might be useful.

Cheers,

Erik


Le 27 mai 04, � 17:02, Fred a �crit :

"Perl is the most powerful computer language ever devised by the mind of
man"
Don't get me wrong I totally agree with you, but Perl was made in c so I
would think that since it derived from c, c might be more versital? I might
be wrong, but that is how I would look at it.


BTW, QUE's Perl 5 by Exaample is the book that I started out with.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Nemmer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 8:32 AM
Subject: Re: (no subject)


Perl is the most powerful computer language ever devised by the mind of

man.


And you can quote me on that. =)

Anthony Nemmer


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