Quoting Michael Torrie <[email protected]>: > On 11/08/2010 09:23 AM, Victor Villa wrote: >> I recently shifted career focus from web dev to sys admin. >> >> As I learn Bash i'm finding more and more that knowledge of a scripting >> language is needed, though i'm seeing some talk about PERL and some talk >> Python. >> >> If my work environment really hasn't taken advantage of a scripting language >> (nothing predefined), which should I choose? PERL or Python? > > You will likely need to read and maintain both languages. A lot of > scripts out there are in Perl that you'll likely need to use and > possibly modify and update. On the other hand, a lot of new scripting > is being done in Python. So whichever one you choose to write your own > scripts in, you will probably have to deal with others' scripts written > in both languages.
Seconded. It's good to know bash, perl, and python. Sometimes one will be a better to for the job than another. I once had to script something that would run based on the sunrise and sunset times of where the machine was located. Since we live on a spherical planet that is tilted 23 1/2 degrees, sunrise and sunset times don't stay the same. Of course since I knew math and astronomy, I was given the task to figure it out since the previous solution of just periodically modifying a cron job was not going to cut it in the long run. Rather than write some serious calculations in bash, I poked around for perl modules and found someone had already done that hard part for me. http://search.cpan.org/~rkhill/Astro-Sunrise-0.91/Sunrise.pm And behold, my first ever perl script came to life and the customer was very happy. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
