MC> Hi, MC> I know this is a stupid question, but I am very new to Linux and I know MC> nothing about script programming. What is the difference between perl and MC> pyton? Why the nedd to create these two diferent programming languages?
Perl is more ancient language then Python. It was created to replace awk, sed and shell scripting. Since that time it had changed a lot and it is very flexible and powerful language now. You can write both simple several lines scripts and complex programs consisting of many modules. For instance sources for some mail software we have wrote in my company has about of 6Mb of sources. AFAIK Python was created later. Python also quite powerful language. People who created this language wasn't satisfied with Perl and/or other languages. I don't know Python too much so it is hard for me to say why. But one difference I know is differences in ideologies. Perl is ideology is that there is exists many ways to make same thing. Often in Perl you can implement same thing in different ways. Python on other side is more restrictive by its ideology. You often are forced to use some 'right' way. Some people thinks that it is good, some that is bad. Thouse who think it is good usually prefer Python, others Perl. P.S. If you are person that love a lot object oriented programming probably you should look at another scripting language 'Ruby'. It is becoming popular now. Its advantage (someone can think that it is disadvantage) that language oriented towards object oriented style programming much more than Perl and Python. P.P.S. And nether trust someone who just says that one of this languages sucks. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/) | | GnuPG 1024D/323BDEE6 D7F7 561E 4C1D 8A15 8E80 E4AE BE1A 53EB 323B DEE6 | | AGAVA Software Company (http://www.agava.com/) | -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-