[Fwd: Re: [SLUG] arrays]

[Jonathan Worthington]

"Stephen O'Neill" <soneill84 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> perl?
>
> Perl is more than just a shell scripting language, it's a full
> programming language. However it's not fully compiled like C, so is
> still regarded as a scripting language.
>
In that case Java and C# could also be considered scripting languages, 
because they run on an interpreter too (oh, but they call it a VM).  :-)  I 
think Perl gets it's "scripting language" status because in days of old it 
pretty much was one.  However, as was said it's a full fledged general 
purpose programming language now.

> It does have a really complicated syntax at times - with lots of
> 'special variables'; however it's extremely powerful. E.g. to get your
> file into a line by line array you would just do something like:
>
> open(FILE_HANDLE, $path) || die('No dice grandma');
> my @file_array = <FILE_HANDLE>;
>
> To appease other list lurkers I should also mention more recent
> scripting languages such as python and ruby which offer a rich syntax
> with an object oriented approach.
Perl can do object orientation too.  I'd also point out that for a lot of 
tasks you don't need OOP - it gets in the way more than it helps at times.

> And for that matter you can even use PHP.
>
>> Can I suggest a future meeting include some workshop time, run by one
>> or two of us who are good at scripting, so non-experts like me can be
>> improved and have chance to ask questions.
>
> I think that we could all learn from each other on this one - I'm better
> at perl than shell scripting, I suspect that anyone with 3 days old
> shell scripts knows more shell than I do. Dave's our Ruby man and
> there's bound to be a perl expert amongst us - every good Linux group
> should have one!
>
I guess I'd count as a Perl "expert", and I'm actually going to be in 
Scarborough for most of December and at the start of January.  I'll happily 
give a Perl scripting talk if anyone wants one (and hopefully drop in to a 
meeting anyway).   I think I'll be in Scarborough more pernamently again 
after next summer too...

Jonathan