Perl's Extreme Makeover 408
PurdueGraphicsMan writes "There's an article over at Yahoo! about the upcoming version of Perl (version 6) and some of the new features (RFC list). From the article: "Although Perl 5's expressions are the most sophisticated available and aspired to by other programming languages, "no one pretends for a moment that they're anything but hideously ugly," said Damian Conway, a core Perl developer and associate professor at Monash University in Australia.""
Whew, backasswards compat-with Perl 5 (Score:5, Funny)
Nice!
-mb
Re:Whew, backasswards compat-with Perl 5 (Score:5, Informative)
Consequently, Perl 5 code should run faster under Perl 6.
Re:Whew, backasswards compat-with Perl 5 (Score:3, Interesting)
But how does eval $string work in a runtime with no compiler?
OO Perl? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OO Perl? (Score:3, Informative)
The "Programming Perl" book voers it, as does (briefly) the "Perl Cookbook", which is a must-have.
Most CPAN modules have an OO interface, so it's worth understanding at least a little of it.
or were you just kidding and/or trolling?
Perl: The Beginning (Score:5, Funny)
a 0 an explosion
a
a | factory!!!!
a
Re:Perl: The Beginning (Score:5, Interesting)
s/(.*?\s+)\(.*?\)/$1/g
Looks like an explosion in the ascii factory to me!
Re:Perl: The Beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
This is trying to match something like adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd (adsfad@#$@!)
and replace it with
asdfa asdfa asdf adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd
or basically, get rid of things in parenthises that are after at least one white space.
so,
s/\s+\(.*?\)//g would work...
but still a lot of slashes
so try this
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
s/\s+ $stuffInParen
or even
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
my $whiteSpace = qr| \s+ |;
s/$whiteSpace $stuffInParen//gx;
now, you can look at the code and have a pretty good idea what it's doing. (even without comments). we're switching stuffInParens that follow whitespace with nothing. just because Perl gives you the flexability to write ugly code doesn't mean you should. if you are writing perl code and it looks ugly, you're doing it wrong. you should find another way to do it... with great power comes great responsability.
see http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2003/06/06/regexps.html [perl.com] for more info.
or you could just use the x modifier (Score:5, Informative)
lameness filter won't let me space the comments neatly, but I'm sure you get the idea.
.02
cLive ;-)
Re:Perl: The Beginning (Score:5, Funny)
With the greatest respect, I think you're missing the point of Perl. If you can understand your code, the Indian programmer who replaces you can understand it.
Perl Haikus (Score:5, Funny)
Should be formatted thusly (Score:3, Insightful)
of the Perl Haikus will not
Apply anymore
We're all going to die (Score:5, Interesting)
Back to Pac Man and Vi then...
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
quick question.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:quick question.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:quick question.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Expressions .. (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose it has to do with the old debate of losely or strict typed langauges. Perl is highly modular but I would hate to work in a team of 10 or more perl developers all writing in their own styles and methods. Shudder.
Yahoo decided to support php rather then perl in their next generation yahoo services specificially because of "There is more then one way to do it".
Of course its all being outsourced to India now where they can just hire more developers if complex problems arrise
Re:Expressions .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but you have to admit that perl has a certain charm about it.
Haven't you ever sat there staring at a subroutine, thinking to yourself "man I sure wish I could just hold shift and slide my finger over the number row to get this done"? Then gone on and painstakingly crafted what you wanted to do in whatever strict language you were actually working in?
Maybe it's just me. But every time I sit down and promise myself to write a new script all tidy and clean in python, about five minutes into it I'm muttering "if this were perl I coulda been DONE by now" and quickly revert back to old faithful.
Re:Expressions .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Whereas I look at my Perl code for about an hour and a half thinking, "Ummmmmmm, what the fuck is this supposed to mean?
Not that either of them have a patch on APL, mind you. APL Roolz.
KFG
Ever heard of comments? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're looking at code *you wrote* for over an hour without understanding it, you only have yourself to blame. Unless you're coding in brainfuck [catseye.mb.ca], I suppose.
tch
cLive ;-)
right...but (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how "Healthy, readable code with sensible naming conventions and a clear structure" explains to you at a later date why you coded as you did. If you had to write something that looks out of place to deal with some legacy code you inherited, I'm sure you'd psychically pick that up just by glancing at the code. Or perhaps you go round naming vars something like $quirky_flag_to_pick_up_strange_situation_caused_b y_bad_code_in_package_X?
And what if someone less experienced than yourself has to maintain your code at a later date? Something that may seem obvious to you may be off of their radar.
If you never have to ask why and no one less intelligent than you ever looks at your code you either are very very lucky, very stupid or unemployed.
.02
cLive ;-)
Re:right...but (Score:3, Informative)
The example i gave was off the top of my head. In the real world, for example, we've been dealing with a JavaScript HTML editor that has its own quirks (to say the least :). We do not have the time to learn enough OO javascript to perfect the code we're using. So we've had to hack how it works. Before presenting a page for edit, we have to remove certain elements and then re-insert them after edit. Without comments, we'd be returning to this code at a later date wondering *why* we're hacking it like this. C
Re:Ever heard of comments? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, even the most readable code takes time to look at and decypher. It is far easier to read that one line comment that you wrote last month and immediately recall what you were doing.
Comments may be crutches, but I will always laugh at the idiot with the compound fracture in their femur who refuses to use a crutch to get around because he is too proud.
Re:Ever heard of comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
He can tell you some really interesting stories about times you can't remember, but he slows you down immensely so he usually gets left at the old folks home while you try to get where ever you're trying to go.
Re:Expressions .. (Score:3, Funny)
Which is why you use comments like this:
Re:Expressions .. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't got the time to write something properly, forget it - you'll only regret it if you write junk.
Re:Expressions .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny. I feel the same way about PHP. It's routine for me to take some broken, busted stuff written in Perl or c or whatever, and redo it in PHP in 1/4 the lines.
As Jethro Tull once said:
"You know what you like, and you like what you know".
I can "do" Perl, but it
Re:Expressions .. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Expressions .. (Score:3, Interesting)
> So does a man standing next to, you holding a gun to your head, saying "INDENT THOSE BLOCKS!".
Certainly, but somehow Python doesn't make me feel quite as nervous.
Besides, there are too many availeability and cost issues with men-standing-next-to-you-holding-gun-to-your-head
whereas Python is 100% free, which I've found to be much more convenient.
Re:Expressions .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty ironic when you consider that PHP has exactly the same issue, along with some other issues Perl does not have (lack of namespaces, inadequate comparison operators, etc.).
Re:Expressions .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Its called DISCIPLINE and its not that hard. Someone makes rules for the dev team and then they are followed and then your code is clean and readable. Why should the language force you to be disciplined? Good programmers know to program following some kind of standard.
And why does everyone bring up PHP? PHP is nothing but Perl with all the best parts taken out and e
What everyone knows about perl (Score:5, Funny)
Unreadable code,
Why would anyone use it?
Learn a better way.
ugliness that grows
into beauty inside of
your favorite shell
Arbitrarily
Nested structures for data;
Joy of birds in flight.
As with the spring rain
Perl is indispensable
Unquestionable
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Perl/Haiku/Abo
Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Interesting)
a) start learning 5 anyways
or
b) wait till 6 is released, because going from barely having a grasp on 5 and then trying to learn 6 would just confuse myself?
i realise that all the perl5 code in the world won't suddenly cease function the minute perl6 is released, but still..
I can see the value in perl, and what a great tool it is, but for some reason i have a hard time wrapping my lil brain around it. It's a bit less "structured" or "consistent" than say C is. I suppose it has to be that way in order to do what it does, though.
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everyone will switch immediately, and not everyone will need/want to switch anyway.
I say go on and learn Perl 5, you won't regret it...
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Informative)
I cannot claim to intimately know Perl 5, but I started learning it a few years back. I belong to the camp of Perl programmers (and I know there are a few of these) who are adopting a "wait and see" attitude to Perl 6.
If you're interested in learning Perl now, you should probably go for the cookbook approach, ie: get a copy of OReilly's Perl cookbook and just try applying the solution to your problem. Then, trying tweaking and figuring out how it works.
As for learning Perl 5, I'd probably point out that there are still some places that run 5.005_03 (certainly Solaris used to ship with that version by default), and that version is at LEAST 5-6 years old :) There are even some places I've heard of that run Perl 4 :) So, I think there is plenty of time to have your investment in learning Perl pay off before people start switching to Perl 6 en masse.
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally what I'd recommend (as a full-time perl programmer) is to learn 5 anyway. It'll take two or three years before the next edition of the Llama (O'Reilly, _Learning_Perl_, look it up your own darn self on Amazon if you must) is out, and in the meantime you can get out of the baby-talk phase this way. Learn reg
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn Perl right now because it will make your life better (assuming your life can be made better by a powerful scripting language/glue-layer from heck). Perl 6 is still far off on the horizon and Perl 5 knowledge will largely transfer to Perl 6.
I think that setting out to learn Perl for its own sake will generally not work. One of Perl's strengths is that it grows with you and your needs. Learn a little bit of Perl and you still solve some very useful problems. For example, many people first learned Perl to do some quick-and-dirty projects like one-off data file reformatting, internal report generation, or simple CGI scripting. Learn more as you need it. It's taken me years to get to the point where I might call myself a skilled Perl hacker. But every step along the way was pleasant. I never felt I was learning stuff for the sake of learning stuff; I was always learning something that made my goals right now easier to achieve.
Perl is about serving you, not you serving it.
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:4, Informative)
Start now. It's gonna be a while before six is out - and even longer before companies will trust it in production environments.
And come over to The Monastery to get help when needed. A great resource for new (and experienced!) Perl hackers. [perlmonks.org]
.02
cLive ;-)
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I won't claim to know any language intimately.
But... I have programed in Perl for the last five years. Why is simple.
Because Perl let's me leverage the last 20 years of programming. If they see a good idea in another language... they put it in Perl.
You will see a lot of people complain because of how Perl code looks. The simple fact is that you can write clean looking code... or ugly code. Perl doesn't care. It is your code... do it the way you want.
Perl's strength is that it let's a programmer program the way they want to. That is also it's weakness.
My advice would be to spend a few more years with a few other languages. You won't appreciate Perl until you know how elegantly it lets you solve some problems that you have used other tools for.
If you are looking for "structure" and don't have the discipline to enforce it yourself... then stay away from Perl.
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:3, Insightful)
If a company doesn't have the discipline to set and enforce coding standards, then the choice of language isn't going to be your biggest problem.
IMHO
Re:Anyone who intimately knows 5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Perl started life as shell script with a built in sed and awk. It has since grown.
The regex stuff in perl 5 is just like sed and grep as far as new user is concerned. The simple regex stuff won't change with perl 6 and the concepts are the same. Perl 6 is going to change the shortcut symbols for the regex expressions.
Perl5 have has a =~ operator that is going to get replaced with a ~~ operator. The ~~ will work in many places where the perl5 =~ won't work. This is part of the push to make perl more orthogonal.
Perl6 will also deal with unicode out of the box with no real issues. Perl5's unicode was a bit of a hackjob as the coders learned along the way. Not that unicode is understood, it will be done right. Some of perl6 seems to be intended to get rid of bad practices based on the concept that "all the world is ascii". For example in Perl upto 6 you can say [a-zA-Z] to mean letters but that won't pickup up the latin-8 char set. Perl6is going to make it harder to say that and easy to say "Letters in the current language".
The list processing may get to the point that it is on the same level as lisp.
Perl6 appears to about about 18 months away so if your going to wait, its a long wait.
Damian Conway gave a great talk on this just a few days ago. If you get a chance to hear him talk, take it.
Who would have thought! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who would have thought! (Score:5, Insightful)
Perl, if written right, can be a VERY good looking, and VERY easy to understand. All of you that say that it is hard to read are:
a) reading code that wasn't meant to be cute, but was meant to work where nothing else was as practical,
b) reading code that was written by someone that didn't know perl, or are
c) reading code written by someone that knows perl a LOT better than you.
In my personal experience, people that gripe about Perl are the ones that use it least. The people I know that use Perl quickly learned to love it.
Slashdotted. Here's the text (Score:5, Funny)
$_
Re:Slashdotted. Here's the text (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted. Here's the text (Score:4, Funny)
Why was Perl5 so Popular? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why was Perl5 so Popular? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perl exposes the mind of the programmer more directly than any other programming language.
If you are more interested in quick hacks and dirty tricks than writing clean and manageable code, your perl will reflect that. If you are interested in impressing people by compressing seventeen operations into a single line of code, your perl will be an ugly, ugly thing.
However, if your intention is to write clear, maintainable, understandable code, then this is what you will write. It isn't hard -- in fact I believe that Perl's flexibility makes this a much easier task than just about any other language. Here are a few of my favourite rules for Perl programmers:
1) Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
2) One line of code means one operation or idea. MAAAAYBE 2. See point #1.
3) If there is a cute, short, hackerish way to do something, and a longer, more boring, more explicit way to do the same thing, ALWAYS pick the boring way. Anyone who looks at your code in six months will be very pleased (instead of ready to kill you). Since Perl is so flexible, this is always possible. As for performance, well, in my experience the slick, hackerish ways of doing things often slow things down more than the explicit-using-more-lines way of doing things.
Performance (Score:3, Interesting)
Amen. I think this is because the interpreter / VM is usually optimised for the most obvious way of doing things. If you try and improve the performance of your code with tricks and shortcuts, you're basically trying to outsmart the Larry and the other internals hackers.
Re:Why was Perl5 so Popular? (Score:3, Insightful)
No expert C++ programmer would do a text processing task in C++. Most experienced programmers would use the scripting language they know best. They might write or use a module written in a compiled language if the task is more complicated than simple text munging.
Too many cooks (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand that Perl6 is supposedly an evolution of the language, but there are so many suggestions for so many features and changes that the language itself seems to suffer from the too many cooks problem. With everyone and their brother suggesting features, the language itself becomes a mish mash of these features without a central theme tying it all together. Even if you said that DWIM was the central theme, can you really justify that when WIM is not what the language does because the feature that I'm using was designed by someone who had a completely different idea of what he meant?
In the past Perl has added functionality that was useful and you can see where the language has its partitions. Base Perl (datatypes, simple arithmetic, simple string manipulation), nested datastructures, regexes, OO, and so on. While admittedly a mess, each addition to the language brought more power and ease. Perl6, OTOH, seems to be adding feature after feature without regard to whether it makes the language easier to use, only more powerful.
So you end up with a new interpreter that won't run your old scripts without modifying the scripts. At the very least it should automatically default to Perl5 syntax unless otherwise told to use Perl6 syntax. Unfortunately, in the push to evolve, Larry and Damian (and the rest of the lunatics) have foregone automatic backwards compatibility.
I'll probably migrate, but not for a while.
Re:Too many cooks (Score:3, Informative)
and you don't have to care about migration for now - not until the next two years. Perl6 is not ready.
the "lunatics", as you said, seem to be very serious and competant...
From the horse's mouth (Score:5, Informative)
If you want the real scoop on the on-going planning of Perl 6, you might want to check out Larry Wall's Apocalypse articles: 1 [perl.com], 2 [perl.com], 3 [perl.com], 4 [perl.com], 5 [perl.com], 6 [perl.com]. On the down side, they are dense. Very dense. For that reason, I actually recommend Daimon Conway's Exegesis articles: 2 [perl.com], 3 [perl.com], 4 [perl.com], 5 [perl.com], 6 [perl.com]. They provide alot more context on what the changes actually mean to you and why they're good.
A picture worth 1000 words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A picture worth 1000 words (Score:4, Interesting)
Three cheers for Perl! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a Perl hacker by any means, but after the possibilities are endless, and I don't think Perl will ever die.
CB
Re:Three cheers for Perl! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I would probably argue that Perl cannot solve "large problems" after creating 100k+ line Perl applications. The problem lies that the reason languages like Perl is good for quick and dirty hacks is just the reason they are not that good for large systems that needs to be maintained over longer periods of time with many developers involved.
Ugly code (Score:5, Funny)
Cypher: Oh that's not encryption... It's a new Perl script I'm working on...
The Matrix Bastardization [detonate.net].
Quite possibly very naive question from a non-perl (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Parrot something akin to the JVM /
If I'm reading all of this right Parrot may well become everything Sun wants Java to become / MS wants
Of course, if I have the wrong end of the stick here I apologise. Perl isn't my strong suit.
Re:Quite possibly very naive question from a non-p (Score:4, Informative)
The main difference between Parrot and
I have heard things along the lines of JVM and
Hope this answers some of your questions.
Maybe OT but I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, it's just like ANY other language (programming or spoken at that), it looks foriegn (go figure) until you put a little effort into it and figure it out.
JM2C
- Mike
Re:Maybe OT but I don't get it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that a lot of the complaints about ugly code come from two things: excessive use of automatic variables like @_ and $!, and regexps. Reading automatic variables is something that comes with practice (Quick! Do you know what @+ is?) but reading regexps is likely to remain a problem until people start using /x (or Perl6) and comment them.
"Initial construction of the Internet" (Score:5, Informative)
Perl was first released in 1987 [perl.org]. Y'know, I could've sworn the internet already existed back then...
(especially since Perl was released in a post to alt.sources)
Larry, please hurry (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry, you need to get an alpha out in 2004 (even if all of the Apocalypses have not been published) or I think you are going to see people lose interest in perl 6. In the time between Apocalypse 1 and today, the mono team have basically cranked out an entire development environment of excellent quality.
Signed, an eight year perl programmer and major fan.
for the naysayers.. (Score:5, Informative)
A few points to ponder ..
You've all heard the "you can write unreadable code in any programming language" argument, so I'll spare you the repetition.. (No, wait.. I didn't, did I? ) *grin*
But also bear in mind that Perl is the first language that I know of that used the foreach construct in the same form as the more sought after languages.. Java has iterators and enumerators, but they introduced a foreach because it is darn easy to understand.
Perl innovated in regular expressions. Even Jeffery Friedl's Mastering Regex (sic) says that other languages aspire to be called "Perl 5 compatible" when they don't necessarily support all the features of Perl 5.6". Love it or hate it, regular expressions are like the microwave in your kitchen. Once you get used to it, it's darn hard to manage without :)
I am not going to go into Perl 6 the moment it is released. But I guess that's ok, because I didn't adopt 5.8 the day it was released either. I just think that Larry Wall has made enough good calls in the language so far, to be worth trusting him for another version. Even one that promises to break some of the idioms that I am accustomed to in it's present incarnation. Hey, I didn't like Perl 5 when I first saw it either, but I notice the difference in my productivity when I got the hang of things.
Re:for the naysayers.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Say what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe that nobody's challenged this statement yet. Somehow I don't think that Lisp or Prolog aspire to Perl 5's expressions...
Perl brought this on itself (Score:3, Funny)
Release date: 2020 (Score:5, Insightful)
Perl has a long history of being practical and useful rather than theoretically perfect, and it makes me sad to see the trend reversing with Perl 6. It seems like Larry is trying to make Perl 6 everything to everyone. That's one sure way to fail (although TMTOWTDI, of course
Perl.... (Score:4, Funny)
Parrot (Score:5, Informative)
Long-term, Parrot hopes to be at the core of not just Perl 6, but also Python, FORTH, and what-have-you. Then applications could support Parrot, and users could script the applications in their favorite language. Python users could call into Perl CPAN code. That sort of fun thing.
Parrot's home page is: http://www.parrotcode.org/ [parrotcode.org]
The Parrot FAQ [parrotcode.org] is worth reading. There are some really entertaining sections. One of my favorites:
Another:
So, my next question was: if they want to become the core of languages like Python, what does Guido van Rossum (the architect of Python) have to say about that? A few google searches later, and I found an interview at linuxfr.org [linuxfr.org], which contained this:
steveha
SNOBOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Spitbol could do things like:
- stringtomatch "this is some text" skipto("(") $ pre_paren ( funcof(pre_paren)$parenmatch = replacement(parenpatch) )
In this case, the $ is an immediate assignment of the match from skipto("(") (roughly equivalent tofuncof is then called with the newly assigned variable (pre_paren), and it's result is inserted as an expression to complete the match.
then whatever matched funcof(pre_paren) is replaced by the results of replacement(parenmatch)
skipto is a builtin, but funcof and replacement would have to be user-defined (and they can be defined on the fly).
Perl6 appears to have similar functionality, but (IMHO) I don't think it's going to be quite as nice as the SNOBOL syntax.
Unfortunately, I'm not good enough at compiler design to write my own spitbol interpreter, or I would.
The one problem with snobol is that it was created before the idea of structured programming came along, so it is goto-structured... (although somebody then came up with ratbol which was essentially a preprocessor to provide RATional structure to snoBOL)
Re:SNOBOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and just to keep on subject:
SNOBOL is considered to be the parent of unix regexpressions and awk which led to Perl. Unfortunately, the children inherited a much castrated version of snobol's string manipulation capabilities which have only now been reasonably addressed in perl6.
If nothing else, I suggest that people interested in the history of pattern matching take a good look at snobol.
Perl is a window into a programmers heart (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this still Perl? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perl: A write only program language (Score:5, Funny)
Python Resources. (Score:3, Informative)
Abandon Perl! Python is the future!
Quote-mania (Score:3, Funny)
Four levels of quotes; fun...
perl is a swiss-army-knife (Score:3, Insightful)
What more to say ? Any real engineer has a "toolkit" of languages they use to put things together: I find "shell" to be glue, and "perl" to be rapid production of do-anything using CPAN modules. That's perl's niche.
Debian (Score:5, Funny)
Threads! (Score:3, Informative)
I've been a perl programmer for six years - I still use it daily - but perl5's support for threading absolutely blows. There are plenty of modules for whipping together a multithreaded TCP server, but no reliable way to share a resource such as a database connection pool between those child threads. Have had to put at least one project on indefinite hold due to this failure.
I assume its that oldskool anti-threading anti-OO attitude. Perl5 still isn't compiled with threading support by default and it breaks a tonne of modules and apps when it is.
Perl6 can't get here soon enough.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO, Perl 6 is merely an employment continuation program for perl authors and training consultants. 5.8 doees more than everything I need and other languages fill in where perl is lacking (thr right tool for the right job and all).
Re:Trolling, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trolling, maybe (Score:5, Informative)
You might be interested in Ponie, then. Ponie is the project to create a Perl5 interpreter for Parrot. It should let you get much of the speed benefit of the new virtual machine without having to learn the new Perl6 syntax. Of course you may still want to learn the new syntax, since it will add many powerful new features, but Ponie will ensure that Perl5- and all of the work you've put into your Perl5 scripts- won't be completely abandoned just because Perl6 has come out.
Re:Ruby... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but you had missed some things that Ruby has none of compared to Perl.
Re:Ruby... (Score:5, Informative)
Doc
http://www.ruby-doc.org/ [ruby-doc.org]
http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ [rubycentral.com]
Unit Testing
http://testunit.talbott.ws/ [talbott.ws]
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyUnit [rubygarden.org]
Library Repository
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/ [ruby-lang.org]
Portability
Source compiles on anything vaugely Unix like
Windows binaries available
User Community
comp.lang.ruby [lang.ruby]
So, what were you on about again?
Re:Perl... (Score:5, Informative)
Doc
Something a little more thorough.
http://www.perldoc.com/ [perldoc.com]
Unit Testing
Not just wrappers, but something a little more thorough and mature like say from executable to module.
Unit Testing [newportal.com]
Library Repository
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/ [ruby-lang.org]
http://www.cpan.org/ [cpan.org]
Portability
[Acorn] [AIX] [Amiga] [Apple] [Atari] [AtheOS] [BeOS] [BSD] [BSD/OS] [Coherent] [Compaq] [Concurrent] [Cygwin] [DG/UX] [Digital] [DEC OSF/1] [Digital UNIX] [DYNIX/ptx] [EMC] [Embedix] [EPOC] [FreeBSD] [Fujitsu-Siemens] [Guardian] [HP] [HP-UX] [IBM] [IRIX] [Japanese] [JPerl] [Linux] [LynxOS] [Macintosh] [Mac OS] [Mac OS X] [MachTen] [Minix] [MinGW] [MiNT] [MPE/iX] [MS-DOS] [MVS] [NetBSD] [NetWare] [NEWS-OS] [NextStep] [Novell] [NonStop] [NonStop-UX] [OpenBSD] [ODT] [OpenVMS] [Open UNIX] [OS/2] [OS/390] [OS/400] [OSF/1] [OSR] [Plan 9] [Pocket PC] [PowerMAX] [Psion] [QNX] [Reliant UNIX] [RISCOS] [SCO] [Sequent] [SGI] [Sharp] [Siemens] [SINIX] [Solaris] [SONY] [Sun] [Symbian] [Stratus] [Tandem] [Tru64] [Ultrix] [UNIX] [U/WIN] [Unixware] [VMS] [VOS] [Win32] [WinCE] [Windows 3.1] [Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP] [z/OS]
User Community
A little more world wide and established.
http://www.pm.org/ [pm.org]
So, what were you on about again?
From the parent parent parent poster. "Ruby has almost all of the power of Perl, with none of the ugliness" isn't quite a fair statement, considering Ruby is lacking or behind on almost everything else Perl is superior at. Ruby is still playing catch up, and depending on who you ask, can also be considered ugly.
Re:Perl... (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite analagous, because that also means your definition of "better" for Ruby is like saying MacOS is better because there are fewer programs available.
For instance, docs and unit testing are pretty much the same in Perl, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java...
I must have screwed up my terminology. The unit testing I am referring to, is the bui
Re:No, Python (Score:5, Funny)
I am the lead developer on a 200K line commercial bioinformatics program written in Perl. That's job security.
Re:No, Python (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No, Python (Score:3, Interesting)
I just like ruby more. I find it easier to learn, even faster to code in, and language development is just as fast, if not faster than python.
Re:why rev a language ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the main topic that other languages aspired to its expressiveness. The problem, from the point of view of a Perl hacker like me, is that some of them have actually outdone it, primarily by creating similar power, expressiveness, and simplicity but without being so ugly *and* being OO. Ruby and Python are pretty much the motivators for the upgrade.
Re:The Parrot Vaporware Engine? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.jwcs.net/developers/perl/po
The 0.1 release may be coming by the end of this month - and if this release isn't 0.1, I'm pretty sure the next one will be. That means Parrot has objects, some of the threading stuff is in place, JIT is working on various platforms and more. There's a lot of hard work going in by a lot of very good developers (not me!), and I'm confident that Parrot will be completed and will be a hot target for dynamic languages.
Re:python & ruby are fine,but they lack {}'s a (Score:3, Informative)
b) Why would anyone have a problem with this? Python code is remarkably easy to read and modify, primarily because there are no block delimiters to deal with. Maybe your editor is faulty?
Re:python & ruby are fine,but they lack {}'s a (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's an idea: get over it. It isn't that big of deal, and either choice is vastly more readable than perl.
Let the flames begin!