Topic awaiting preservation: Why do you use Perl? (Page 1 of 1)

I've always meant to some day dig in and learn Perl, and was recently forced to start doing just that because I had a project in which PHP was unavailable.

I've read many posts in this forum from others saying that although they now use PHP for much of their web work there are still times that they prefer (or need) to use Perl. To help better apply my Perl learning, or at least give it a direction, I was wondering if any of you could list some of the tasks that you use Perl for.

Thanks to all

-Butcher-

Hi Butcher,

For me, it is what I started out with for web coding. I?ve taken a handful C/C++ and Java classes in the past but never really pursued it. I just kinda fell into web programming a couple of years ago and the job at hand needed to be done in perl. With my background in the other languages, I found that I picked up perl basics quite fast.

Another reason is that I subscribe to the 'keep your perl out of your HTML and your HTML out of your perl' maxim and I find php to be quite the opposite. I?m not an artist, in the graphical sense, and I prefer to leave the page design to those who are. That leaves me to concentrate on the perl and making the application do what it?s supposed to do.

I also use perl for projects not related to the web. It is great for processing text files in batch or even a replacement for shell scripts. There are quite a few Win32 modules available for automating Windows tasks as well.

I have nothing against php. I in fact, I use it on occasion for simple stuff but personally, I can do much, much more with perl. That?s why you never see me in the middle of those php vs. perl pissing matches that pop up around here every once in a great while

~Charlie

Piper said it well. I use perl mostly for wholly server side scripts, things that I need to automate on the server but not necessarily things that display on the web. Also usually things where shell scripting tends to be a bit lacking. Once I had to write a script that once a day parsed an excel spreadsheet and created a text file. This is the kind of thing that perl is great at.

At the end of the day PHP is a web-centric language (and I think this is a good thing) while perl is much more expansive at the cost of ease of use.

All in all though knowing perl is never a bad thing. When you needs something done quickly and on almost any platform perl is a great tool



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 03-24-2003).]

Thanks for the replies guys!

You've given me answers about like I expected. As I'm reading and learning, Perl feels like a natural for non-display, command line or piped programs. I just wanted to hear some of the stuff guys like you were using it for all the time. It makes it easier to associate what I'm learning if I can apply it to something practical in my head.

Thanks again.

-Butcher-

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 03-24-2003).]

I use perl because it is easy to protype ideas with it. I have a long, extensive background with many other languages such and C and C++, but use perl when I want to put together a medium sized project to see how it will work. I may then implement the final solution in C or continue to use the perl version depending on the need of the project.

Unfortunately, I have not had an opportunity to learn PHP (would like to soon). I don't know how it compares with perl, so my next comment may not apply.

I find the perl modules to be a great help in putting something together quickly. Almost anything you might want to do has a module available on CPAN for it. I think the modules are a lot of what has made perl as popular as it is.

I have used perl modules to do date calculations, create CGI programs, give me http:, ftp:, and telnet: access to the web, to read and interpret PDF files, to download web pages and create databases in MySQL, Sybase, MSQL, and Oracle, and to create Excel spreadsheets.

I didn't really like perl when I first started using it, but I'm beginning to see that there definitly is a place for it.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Very good explanations.

Generally the things that I've read end up being very biased one way or the other, and very rarely have a good explanation of why/when to use one over the other.

These posts help clear up some of my confusion.

"keep your perl out of your HTML and your HTML out of your perl"

Amen to what you preach, my brotha!!

that's kinda wha I've been trying to say for so long but could never really express...

...I'ma go print that onto a T-shirt now..


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