At 5:11 AM +0100 3/18/02, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Yeah, but you still need to use a different language (XS, C, or most >likely both) to extend Perl. I don't know Tcl, but it's my understanding >you can extend Tcl using Tcl. If that's true indeed, I'd say Tcl wins >with big points here. (Or, more generally, any language that can be >extended without dropping into another language wins over Perl in this >department).
Another area where Tcl wins is in the fact that any Tcl statement can be parsed quite easily, even in isolation. Perl, OTOH, can be written in ways that make an expression impossible to parse without parsing a passel of other modules first. One other thing I noticed, while reading Ousterhout's "Tcl and the Tk Toolkit" (p. 41), was this advice: It is possible to use substitutions in very complex ways, but I urge you not to do so. Substitutions work best when used in very simple ways such as "set a $b". If you use too many substitutions in a single command, your code will be unreadable and unreliable. In situations like these I suggest breaking up the offending command into several commands that build up the arguments in simple stages. ... Of course, many Perl programmers are far too sophisticated to pay any attention to this sort of advice (:-). -r -- email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; phone: +1 650-873-7841 http://www.cfcl.com/rdm - my home page, resume, etc. http://www.cfcl.com/Meta - The FreeBSD Browser, Meta Project, etc. http://www.ptf.com/dossier - Prime Time Freeware's DOSSIER series http://www.ptf.com/tdc - Prime Time Freeware's Darwin Collection
