**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Fri Jun 27 02:59:56 2008 Jun 27 12:27:38 ok Jun 27 12:27:56 I find Perl to be an extremely "read-only" language. Jun 27 12:28:24 i have done a few things with it lately though, it is quite flexible Jun 27 12:28:27 As far as a nice language to write goes, Java wins hands down for me. Jun 27 12:28:43 ahh, ok, much better flexibility there of course Jun 27 12:28:48 But for a "quick hack" language, PHP is not bad. Jun 27 12:29:06 my few things have been basically file or text manipulation, which perl is perfect for Jun 27 12:29:54 I tend to prefer shell and awk for some of that work. Jun 27 12:30:21 In particular, when I started hacking routers, I was very surprised at how much I could get done in awk Jun 27 12:30:22 ahh, awk is painful for someone who hasn't used it before though :-) Jun 27 12:30:44 i have tried to read an awk line from time to time and given up Jun 27 12:31:01 mind you, some of the perl regexp s// stuff can look cryptic also Jun 27 12:31:46 Yeah, regex is very powerful but hard to read. The problem I have with perl is that all the code looks like regex. Jun 27 12:32:17 Still, the hardest thing to read are sendmail configuration files. They win hands down. Jun 27 12:32:57 Sendmail configs have been described as "an explosion in a punctuation factory", which is fairly accurate. Perls is not very far behind. Jun 27 12:33:21 glad i am not a sysadmin sometimes Jun 27 12:34:04 awk is actually simple "regex {code}" where code only executes if regex matches. Jun 27 12:34:59 I see interesting things done from time to time, like test1&&(do the thing you want to do) in perl Jun 27 12:35:04 I've done a few years as a sysadmin, looking after a global infrastructure of 65k+ servers. Jun 27 12:36:04 rather than type if test1 { blah} Jun 27 12:37:20 Most languages support the boolean short circuit evaluation part1 && part2 where part2 only executes if part1 succeeded; there's also the || variant, where part2 only executes if part1 failed. Jun 27 12:37:21 ok, bored with this thing now, going to watch some tv Jun 27 12:37:40 ahh, good tip Jun 27 12:38:07 * peteru is back to work. The compile is now finished (rebuild takes about 20 minutes) **** ENDING LOGGING AT Sat Jun 28 02:59:57 2008