[SWLUG] Programming language for a dummy

[Carter N.]

Hi Matt,

If you're parsing line-based log files (i.e. most of the information
regarding a specific 'object' is contained on one line), then you might
want to look at sed and awk in the context of shell scripts.

For instance, you could count events matching some criteria by filtering
the relevant records with awk or sed, then sorting before feeding into
uniq. The main advantage of this approach is that it doesn't require
programming all the file opening/reading/closing. If, however, you need
more power then I would suggest Perl.

I've done a fair bit of this lately, and I might have some scripts here
that could get you started.

As for web programming, I use ASP (ahem), but PHP seems to enjoy a very
strong following. Perl can also be used for web programming, although I
don't think it can be embedded into HTML in the same way that ASP and
PHP can.

Cheers,

Neil
------------------------------------------------------------
Neil Carter                            Psychology Department
Research Technician                       Swansea University
                                       Wales, United Kingdom
+44 (0)1792 295610
http://psy.swansea.ac.uk/staff/carter/