Ask Larry Wall

About what? Perl is probably a good topic choice. No one knows more about Perl than Larry Wall, right? We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Larry by email, and post his answers when we get them back. Note: Due to Slashdot's line length restrictions, lines of code over 50 characters long may not display correctly. Please be aware of this if you include code samples in your question.

Line Length

[carrier lost]

Due to Slashdot's line length restrictions, lines of code over 50 characters long may not display correctly.

Isn't this something that can be fixed in Perl?

MjM

I only mod up...

Perl and slashdot

[larry bagina]

Note: Due to Slashdot's line length restrictions, lines of code over 50 characters long may not display correctly. Please be aware of this if you include code samples in your question.

Do you have any suggestions for improving SLASH?

How many ducks

[Anonymous Coward]

How many average sized ducks can fit into a two car garage. I need to know quick.

LOTR

[baldass_newbie]

In the Camel Book, you mention Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as good background reading for Perl.
Do you think the Peter Jackson movies are an acceptable alternative? Or do I have to read the books?

The REAL question

[unicron]

Mr. Wall,

Your campaign seems to have the momentum of a freight train. Why are you so popular?

Heidi

[Keitarou]

That was what I wanted to ask, actually. I was wondering if I could have a date with your daughter, Heidi [stonehenge.com].
Thanks.

The EURO...

[VladDrac]

The euro has introduced a new symbol. Will you use it in perl6, and what for? ;)

Re:PLEASE ANSWER

[NerdSlayer]

I'd find it hard to beleive that someone could argue that Perl as a language has a better design than Ruby (now's your chance if you want to). If Larry Wall is any sort of visionary shouldn't he swallow his pride and switch to Ruby?

I find it hard to believe that someone could argue Gnome as a desktop has a better design than Windows. If swagr is any sort of visionary shouldn't he stop doing his own thing and immediately start blowing Bill Gates?

Perl and Slashdot?

[toupsie]

Larry,

Do you know of any Perl modules that might assist Slashdot editor's from posting duplicate articles over and over again -- even within a six hour time period?

Re:Heidi

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can I give your daughter a perl necklace?"

Call the Cult Awareness Network!

[Anonymous Coward]

You program Christians?

403

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll find your answer here... http://www.wall.org/~heidi/ [wall.org]

Re:Perl's Roots...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha-ha brain-dead suckas. Where there is a will there is a way.

function elems(arr, o) {
for (o in arr) {
}
return o
}

function loadfile(fname,p, a,x,ret) {
while ((getline 0) {
array[a++] = $p
}
for (x=1 ; x = _elems(array) ; x++) {
ret = length(ret) 1 ? array[x] "\n" : ret" " array[x]" " "\n"
}
return ret
}

Works super-well even if it is a kludge.
With the |& addition in gawk 3.1 there is even more that can be done.
Perl sucks.

Re:James Joyce

[Zordak]

If he were still alive, and were writing software instead of fiction, would he program in Perl?

If he were still alive and writing bad software instead of bad fiction, I would do the world a favor and shoot him myself. All of his software would be written in INTERCAL, for which he would think himself very clever, and Computer Science and Engineering professors everywhere would waste entire semesters forcing students to decipher it because it would be considered a "masterwork" of software.