On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 10:32 -0700, Merrill Oveson wrote: > Perl can do everything a bash script can do and more? (I've played with it > a little in the past.)
Well... theoretically any Turing complete language can do everything another Turing complete language can do. But that's not really helpful. What you're really asking is: "How hard is it to move from Bash to Perl?" Depends. Running commands like Bash is a tiny bit more difficult, but not much. Managing data is much easier. If your program really is complex enough to variable scoping is a real problem, even if switching to Perl takes some work, you'll be glad you did when you're done. The nice thing about Perl is that you can program Perl like most other languages. You can write Bash-like Perl, C-like Perl, Lisp-like Perl. Of course shouldn't. You should write Perl-like Perl and learning to do so requires time, just like everything else. -- When you tell me I should give proprietary software a fair technical evaluation because its features are so nice, what you are actually doing is saying "Look at the shine on those manacles!" to someone who remembers feeling like a slave. -- Eric S. Raymond /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
