"Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> wrote in message
news:3a54973b@news.povray.org...
>
> I think I once decided with myself that if I were ever to learn a real
> programming language I'd start with Pascal or Delphi or what it's
called...
>
> Why do you think PERL would be the best choice?
>

1. No compilation needed, so very fast to prototype
2. Regular expressions support built-in (perfect for your needs)
3. It's free
4. Cross-platform - no need to rewrite code for diff. o/s's
5. CGI
6. IMHO a fairly shallow learning curve.

The main criticisms against it are that it's slow and obfusticated.

Well, it may be slower than a compiled lang., but unless you are doing
high-end math, I doubt you'd notice.

As for obfusticated, that's up to the coder. The reason (IMHO) that it has
this reputation is that you can code like this:

if($value > 10){
    print $value;
}

which is clear. But the same lines can be written as:

print $value if($value > 10);

which, IMHO, is not. Also, regex can look like line noise, but that's regex
for you, and it's still damn useful.

I'm not suggesting that PERL is perfect for all tasks, but for text and file
processing it's a great tool.

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