[oclug] This one is for Dan York and e-smith

[Dan Cardamore]

That that was sarcasm in my email.

I've already done everything you've enlightened me to in your email.  I
do know perl, and that is why I think perl is an excellent programming 
language.

Dan

P.S.  There was no sarcasm in this email.  Honest Sir!

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 03:44:52PM -0500, Kirrily Robert wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 11:50:52AM -0800, Francis Pinteric wrote:
> > > The other thing I don't like about perl is how hard it is to do
> > > things.
> > > It can take forever to regex a file or to do sockets.  It also
> > > lacks in
> > > its ease of code reusability, and portability.  Some day they
> > > should
> > > make it a library for C so that you can use perl with C... maybe
> > > then it
> > > would get better by working with a good language.
> > 
> > Didn't I read somewhere that they were going to make perl compile
> > directly into machine code or something a while back? I can't
> > remember. Somehow it was dismissed because they said the "language
> > was fast enough for what if does" or whatever that means.
> > > ... Then again, maybe I'm wrong :)
> 
> Would you both please keep your opinions to subjects you know about?
> 
> "It can take forever to regex a file"?  Are we talking about performance
> here?  If so, you need to be clear about what you're comparing it to,
> what sort of regular expression matches you're attempting, and what sort
> of data it's operating on.
> 
> "Do sockets", again, is uselessly vague.  Are you using the IO::Socket
> module from the core distribution and/or CPAN?  What application are you
> using it for, and would you have been better off using one of the
> specialised libnet modules for FTP, HTTP, or other network services?
> And what do you mean by "takes forever"?  Are we talking about
> performance here, or programmer effort?
> 
> Of course, the usual argument here is "no matter how good your Perl,
> it's still not as fast as good C/assembler/machine code".  That's true.
> But programmer time is more expensive than CPU cycles and memory in
> almost every case, as I'm sure you're aware. 
> 
> Perl's reusability is extremely good.  Take a look at CPAN for a huge
> collection of modules for just about every purpose under the sun, which
> encourage code reuse better than anything I've seen for any other
> language. (Which is not to say that they don't exist for other
> languages, just that I haven't necessarily seen them :))
> 
> And as for portability: most Perl code runs, usually without any
> modifications whatsoever, on over 80 platforms.  How much more portable
> do you want it?  There are of course some things to keep in mind when
> writing portable Perl, but the "perlport" manpage which comes with the
> standard Perl distribution gives a good rundown of the things to watch
> out for (most of which will seldom be encountered by most Perl
> programmers).  It also lists most known platforms as of the current
> version, if you're interested.
> 
> With regard to "compiling Perl to machine code", if you had read the
> Perl FAQ (specifically, "man perlfaq3") you would find the answer to the
> question: "How can I compile my Perl program into byte code or C?"
> 
> You can currently embed C in Perl using XS, but it's a bit tricky.  It's
> highly likely that the forthcoming Perl 6 will make this considerably
> easier using something like Inline.pm.
> 
> References:
> 
> The Perl FAQ and other docco:
> 	http://www.perldoc.com/
> 
> Performance:
> 	http://perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlfaq3.html#How%20can%20I%20make%20my%20Perl%20program%20run%20faster%3f
> 	(sorry for the long URLs)
> 
> Perl portability manpage:
> 	http://perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlport.html
> 
> List of supported platforms:
> 	http://perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlport.html#Supported%20Platforms
> 
> Compiling to C and/or bytecode:
> 	http://perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlfaq3.html#How%20can%20I%20compile%20my%20Perl%20program%20into%20byte%20code%20or%20C%3f	
> 
> Embedding other languages with Inline.pm:
> 	http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Inline
> 
> 
> Hopefully this material will be useful and edifying.  Next time you post
> about Perl, perhaps you can do it with a little more background
> knowledge.
> 
> K.
> 
> -- 
> Kirrily "Skud" Robert
> skud at e-smith.com (work)
> skud at infotrope.net (home)
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 Dan Cardamore          wombat at hld.ca         http://www.hld.ca
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