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Domain: perl.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to perl.com.
Comments · 775
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Re:Where??http://www.perl.com/pub/v/documentation
Most of this documentation also comes with the ActivePerl distribution.
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Re:Would I walk a mile for a camel?You mean, like ActivePerl?
Or did you mean, more like IndigoPerl? Perhaps you aren't aware that Perl has been available for Win32 systems for over four years, and that it's been ported to almost every other OS under the sun...
Or, more than likely, IHBT.
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Re:Would I walk a mile for a camel?
'Perl development kit' - use a text editor, I do. Zap for RISC OS has a nice 'Perl syntax colouring' mode, and EditPlus does the same for Windows. Oh, if you bothered to check Perl.com, you'll now that Perl is available for Win32, Macintosh, 'UNIX' and RISC OS. Perl is a very handy language to know, and it's quick and simple. I know the 2nd edition of 'The Camel' has came in very useful for me, but it's also good to check on other resources.
Richy C.
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Re:Would I walk a mile for a camel?
'Perl development kit' - use a text editor, I do. Zap for RISC OS has a nice 'Perl syntax colouring' mode, and EditPlus does the same for Windows. Oh, if you bothered to check Perl.com, you'll now that Perl is available for Win32, Macintosh, 'UNIX' and RISC OS. Perl is a very handy language to know, and it's quick and simple. I know the 2nd edition of 'The Camel' has came in very useful for me, but it's also good to check on other resources.
Richy C.
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Re:Quit yer bitching!
Any language with such a massive library so oriented to network programming would have this advantage.
One thing that nobody has mentioned, yet, is the huge size of the Java "standard library"
There are API's for doing everything under the Sun which is great news for developers.
Although any new language coming out in the past few years would have to be called braindead for not including a Regular Expression class.
(Maybe I've been corrupted by too much Perl, or Ruby ).
Steve
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Re:Perl is the luggable of computer languages
No, because in order to get anything done in cgi, you have to use lots of those "unix-specific functions" you allude to
Just in case you've not seen this, there's a project underway to re-implement most common UN*X commands in Perl
Find it here http://language.perl.com/ppt/what.html
These tools can be used on multiple systems, and can be used if you think you need a Unix command...
Steve
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Foundation for a higher-level languageThis may just be the beginning...
Recall that originally C++ used the Cfront compiler to generate C code which was then compiled as normal. Also, NQC for Lego Mindstorms is a replacement programming language that surpasses the functionality of the graphical programming tool Lego provides.
Perhaps someone will build a CFront-like compiler to generate YaBasic statements from a higher level language (such as Perl) allowing for more fully featured programming. YaBasic may be a small step right now, but I can see technically skilled PlayStation2 programmers coming up with replacement (or at least a wrapper) for YaBasic (though Sony UK is not off the hook for supplying a cheesy language for their system).
Note: I'm kidding about using Perl. Ugh... (shudder)
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Re:Why Not?
Maybe the complainers have to work with shitty programmers. It does you a lot of good to write good code if everyone you work with writes crap. Some languages make it easer to write crap than others.
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Huzzah for Damian (and Perl)
Dr. Conway is a truly delightful speaker and "cowboy" hacker. He brings to Perl not just excellent coding chops but solid development methodology. His book on Object Orient Perl gives legitimacy and respect to this often ridiculed subject. His greatest contribution to the Perl community so far has been his outstanding presentations at YAPC, the Open Source Conference and the University of Perl series.
Damian Conway is both an inspired and inspiring individual. In a profession dominated by blowhards and egotists, he's a genuinely decent human being.
If you missed it earlier, here is a recent interview with him posted on Perl.com.
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Try them!
I think it's a neverending debate because the good question is not "Which one is better as a first language?" The question you should ask yourself is "Which one is better for me?"
I found Python to be better suited for me, and of course I'm trying to convert everyone to Python. But I know there are (lots of) people who prefer Perl.
So, here is my unofficial "Choose between Perl and Pyhton in 2 days" guide:
Day 1
Download and install
Python at http://www.python.org/download/ http://www.perl.com/pub/lang uag e/info/software.html
Download/Browse/Print (whatever suits you) some tutorials
Python at http://www.python.org/doc/current
Perl at http://ww w.c clabs.missouri.edu/things/instruction/perl/perlcou rse.html
Rest of the 2 days:
Follow the tutorials and try to write some very short programs of your own.
Third day:
Go back to work with sore, red eyes.
Later: Learn them both, and C too! -
Re:whether or not you like this, its what Linux neBasic is just a bad framwork for system integration stuff. True a modern desktop environment needs a scriping langage that non-programers can learn to use some-what easily. The unix world alrady has this, it is called Python which is designed after a teaching language ABC, and has the nice feature of some forcing of style, everything is a first class object, etc. Which I think is a good this for non-programers. (their code will be more readable, and python code is easier to learn how to read.) However TIMTOWTDI, we also have Perl and scheme and tcl. Just to show my bias on what should fill the roll of VB/VBscript under a non-programmer desktop enviorment. But I feel that Python does the best job for the NON-Programmer since this is/was a design criterion for Python.
Basic has a number of bad feature and I think we should let the pile of cruft died with windows.
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Re:Jinkies!
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Re:My Innocent Comment
This is true. csh is unable to manipulate any file descriptor, errs on a simple time | echo statement, says kill -1 `cat foo` is ambiguous, can only trap SIGINT, and has strange bugs. However, tcsh fixes some of these bugs. See Tom Christiansen's Csh Programming Considered Harmful article for more information.
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Re:Why do we see so little of Python?Probably all the Perl info you'd want can be found here. Near the bottom there's a section called "C and Perl", and that pretty much covers any C/Perl integration questions, and how to write extensions in C.
Perl supports prototypes, which let you control your function argument behavior, and create new syntax. The example I gave with exceptions is actually very clean, with no C-style hackery required.
The interesting thing about & is that you can generate new syntax with it:
sub try (&@) {
my($try,$catch) = @_;
eval { &$try };
if ($@) {
local $_ = $@;
&$catch;
}
}
sub catch (&) { $_[0] }
try {
die "phooey";
} catch {
};
That prints "unphooey". (Yes, there are still unresolved issues having to do with the visibility of @_. I'm ignoring that question for the moment. (But note that if we make @_ lexically scoped, those anonymous subroutines can act like closures...
(Gee, is this sounding a little Lispish? (Never mind.))))
Otherwise, Perl implicitly takes argument lists; in fact, everything you pass to a non-prototyped function behaves exactly like an array of arguments (sort of like main() in C), and if you don't like that, you can always pass a reference to your own structures. More on all of this in the perlsub documentation. Check it out, it's very flexible as to how it handles function arguments and return values, and prototypes simply extend this further.
I agree that shell looks somewhat backwards compared to Pascal or C, (I never had to use Algol!) but it's a great tool for getting the job done, and that's why Perl is often patterned after it. It's like a shell language with support for everything in C and the standard Unix tools built-in, including the ideas of regexps from grep, the sort from qsort(), and whatnot. However, Perl doesn't have any arbitrary quoting, scoping, and argument-passing rules. It's quite clear on all of these points, and the quoting rules especially are very handy. And from what I've heard here, Python has some interesting scoping rules that aren't lexical or dynamic scope, while Perl supports either one, and more.
As to the variable names, well, I think I covered that point already. It might turn newbies away from Perl, but I think it isn't a bad paradigm to try. It at least makes you think about what type your variable is, which is something you should do anyhow. (In Scheme, you constantly check for it instead, which I also like; in C, well, you'd better remember which one you meant, as well...)
By the way, thanks for the feature debating! You don't have to stop just yet, but I want you to know that I actually find this part of the discussion fascinating, and fun. I was debating to myself just last night about how many details a language should really be allowed to handle, and how much of that a programmer should be able to tweak, and I'm sure there's a compromise in there somewhere. But you can't expect any language to really do the right thing without being too unwieldy to use...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. -
Re:Why do we see so little of Python?Probably all the Perl info you'd want can be found here. Near the bottom there's a section called "C and Perl", and that pretty much covers any C/Perl integration questions, and how to write extensions in C.
Perl supports prototypes, which let you control your function argument behavior, and create new syntax. The example I gave with exceptions is actually very clean, with no C-style hackery required.
The interesting thing about & is that you can generate new syntax with it:
sub try (&@) {
my($try,$catch) = @_;
eval { &$try };
if ($@) {
local $_ = $@;
&$catch;
}
}
sub catch (&) { $_[0] }
try {
die "phooey";
} catch {
};
That prints "unphooey". (Yes, there are still unresolved issues having to do with the visibility of @_. I'm ignoring that question for the moment. (But note that if we make @_ lexically scoped, those anonymous subroutines can act like closures...
(Gee, is this sounding a little Lispish? (Never mind.))))
Otherwise, Perl implicitly takes argument lists; in fact, everything you pass to a non-prototyped function behaves exactly like an array of arguments (sort of like main() in C), and if you don't like that, you can always pass a reference to your own structures. More on all of this in the perlsub documentation. Check it out, it's very flexible as to how it handles function arguments and return values, and prototypes simply extend this further.
I agree that shell looks somewhat backwards compared to Pascal or C, (I never had to use Algol!) but it's a great tool for getting the job done, and that's why Perl is often patterned after it. It's like a shell language with support for everything in C and the standard Unix tools built-in, including the ideas of regexps from grep, the sort from qsort(), and whatnot. However, Perl doesn't have any arbitrary quoting, scoping, and argument-passing rules. It's quite clear on all of these points, and the quoting rules especially are very handy. And from what I've heard here, Python has some interesting scoping rules that aren't lexical or dynamic scope, while Perl supports either one, and more.
As to the variable names, well, I think I covered that point already. It might turn newbies away from Perl, but I think it isn't a bad paradigm to try. It at least makes you think about what type your variable is, which is something you should do anyhow. (In Scheme, you constantly check for it instead, which I also like; in C, well, you'd better remember which one you meant, as well...)
By the way, thanks for the feature debating! You don't have to stop just yet, but I want you to know that I actually find this part of the discussion fascinating, and fun. I was debating to myself just last night about how many details a language should really be allowed to handle, and how much of that a programmer should be able to tweak, and I'm sure there's a compromise in there somewhere. But you can't expect any language to really do the right thing without being too unwieldy to use...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. -
Re:Why do we see so little of Python?Probably all the Perl info you'd want can be found here. Near the bottom there's a section called "C and Perl", and that pretty much covers any C/Perl integration questions, and how to write extensions in C.
Perl supports prototypes, which let you control your function argument behavior, and create new syntax. The example I gave with exceptions is actually very clean, with no C-style hackery required.
The interesting thing about & is that you can generate new syntax with it:
sub try (&@) {
my($try,$catch) = @_;
eval { &$try };
if ($@) {
local $_ = $@;
&$catch;
}
}
sub catch (&) { $_[0] }
try {
die "phooey";
} catch {
};
That prints "unphooey". (Yes, there are still unresolved issues having to do with the visibility of @_. I'm ignoring that question for the moment. (But note that if we make @_ lexically scoped, those anonymous subroutines can act like closures...
(Gee, is this sounding a little Lispish? (Never mind.))))
Otherwise, Perl implicitly takes argument lists; in fact, everything you pass to a non-prototyped function behaves exactly like an array of arguments (sort of like main() in C), and if you don't like that, you can always pass a reference to your own structures. More on all of this in the perlsub documentation. Check it out, it's very flexible as to how it handles function arguments and return values, and prototypes simply extend this further.
I agree that shell looks somewhat backwards compared to Pascal or C, (I never had to use Algol!) but it's a great tool for getting the job done, and that's why Perl is often patterned after it. It's like a shell language with support for everything in C and the standard Unix tools built-in, including the ideas of regexps from grep, the sort from qsort(), and whatnot. However, Perl doesn't have any arbitrary quoting, scoping, and argument-passing rules. It's quite clear on all of these points, and the quoting rules especially are very handy. And from what I've heard here, Python has some interesting scoping rules that aren't lexical or dynamic scope, while Perl supports either one, and more.
As to the variable names, well, I think I covered that point already. It might turn newbies away from Perl, but I think it isn't a bad paradigm to try. It at least makes you think about what type your variable is, which is something you should do anyhow. (In Scheme, you constantly check for it instead, which I also like; in C, well, you'd better remember which one you meant, as well...)
By the way, thanks for the feature debating! You don't have to stop just yet, but I want you to know that I actually find this part of the discussion fascinating, and fun. I was debating to myself just last night about how many details a language should really be allowed to handle, and how much of that a programmer should be able to tweak, and I'm sure there's a compromise in there somewhere. But you can't expect any language to really do the right thing without being too unwieldy to use...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. -
Re:Simple solution - don't use it
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Re:Simple solution - don't use it
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Re:Wrong-headed thinking
this post is 99% recycled
-----------------------------------------see this comment from a previous story on software freedom.
Re:Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss (Score:4, Informative)
by iCEBaLM (icebalm@[NOSPAM]bigfoot.com) on Thursday August 24, @05:45PM GMT
(User #34905 Info) http://www.lucid.dyndns.org
Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work.
perl
Ogg Vorbis
Freenet
DRI
OpenAL
-- iCEBaLM
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Re:Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss
Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work.
perl
Ogg Vorbis
Freenet
DRI
OpenAL
-- iCEBaLM -
I bought a For Dummies book once......it was so badly written I'll never buy from IDG again. I echo the sediments of Tom Christenian review of Perl5 For Dummies:
Perl5 for Dummies is not only made for dummies, it's guaranteed to keep you one. But hey, if you like to have your competence and intelligence insulted everywhere from the title to the text, then this is the book for you. This book can't figure out the difference between an array and a list, thinks there's a \v escape, screws up the CGI form decoding (why does everyone do this?), doesn't understand the difference between programs and libraries, massively screws up quoting on Win32 paths, spreads FUD about $_, omits $!, and relegates the true heart and soul of Perl, pattern matching and hashes, way to the end, in the chapters 14 and 15 respectively. So, it's technically screwed up, has hard-to-read style, does nearly everything the hard way, hides the good stuff where you won't find it, and likes to put its reader down. Even more so, it revels in showing disrespect to anyone who seems to enjoy or be good at programming. Perhaps this makes dummies feel good.
With a publisher who screws up a book on a simple subject that much, would you really buy from them? -
Re:iPaq as development tool?
I'd love to have Python or Perl.
Get yourself a PocketPC -- Python, PocketC, Visual C++, VB, Scheme, REBOL, etc. Okay, so Perl is still being worked on. And FYI, if you're not quite ready to ditch your current handheld yet, someone's also working on a Perl port for the Palm, too.
Speaking of Python, why no Slashdot article about the new Python 1.6 beta 1 just released? Some of us have been waiting forever for an update, and it's just as newsworthy as the "New Kernel 2.3.32983-pre5-ac out!" stories.
Cheers,
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Free software for windowsFirst of all, Cygnus (now owned by RedHat) developed a free library that allows to compile Unix-tools on a Windows system. They have also ported a whole set of free tools to Windows.
Secondly, Perl has been ported to Windows. Now, you can run all the nice perl scripts and programs on Windows. Check the Perl Power Tools for another set of free standard Unix utilities that you can run on Windows.
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SVG
SVG specifications have been evolving for quite some time, and Adobe is one of the companies in the forefront of SVG acceptance. At Adobe's SVG website you can download the SVG plug-in (2.4meg, Win32/Mac) and then see demos of what SVG is capable of. One of the coolest things SVG can do over Flash is client-side image filters, such as marbled textures, flaming text, and embossing, without the user having to download a large raster image.
The biggest problem facing SVG going forward is the strong alliance between Microsoft and Macromedia, the makers of Flash. This alliance lead to the tight integration of Flash in Internet Explorer 5.5. Fortunately Adobe has worked out a deal with Microsoft to automatically download the SVG viewer on-demand in future releases, much like Internet Explorer automatically installs the Flash viewer now.
Personally I think the biggest strength of SVG lies in its text/xml format, because any current HTML generating tool (perl, php, cold fusion, asp) can generate SVG code just as easily. -
Re:This might finally cause me to learn Perl
I agree with Shoeboy, Perl isn't that hard to read. I'm not even a Perl-Master or anything. Perl is one of the easiest languages I've ever had the pleasure of learning, you can start writing useful programs in about a day. Sometimes it's hard to read the regular expressions, and most of the time, when I'm reading code, looking for bugs, I glance past the regular expressions, keeping note that there was one, if I don't find a bug, I then go back and examine them. They're easy to pick out, once you spend a week or so on them, they aren't so hard to decipher.. that's actually how I learned regexps, by looking at an parser which I knew worked and I had the original data file handy. An O'Reilly book or the Perl Documentation page at your side helps too.
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Perl backgroundI see a lot of standard "I don't like Perl 'cause it's ugly" and "Perl is line noise" sort of comments that I've been seeing since before anyone had ever heard of the language (back in '91). The following links are places that y'all should prowl before trying to discuss what perl "should be". You certainly don't have to like the language, but before discussing the things that make the language usable you should understand what it's TRYING to do.
Enjoy! -
Perl backgroundI see a lot of standard "I don't like Perl 'cause it's ugly" and "Perl is line noise" sort of comments that I've been seeing since before anyone had ever heard of the language (back in '91). The following links are places that y'all should prowl before trying to discuss what perl "should be". You certainly don't have to like the language, but before discussing the things that make the language usable you should understand what it's TRYING to do.
Enjoy! -
You mean Perl Power Tools?The Perl Power Tools: The Unix Reconstruction Project appears to be as complete as it's going to get.
The " Doneness" listing indicates that virtually all of the commands are done, and the last date that something was updated was in June 1999.
It may well be effectively complete. I don't think PPT has taken the world by storm, though...
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You mean Perl Power Tools?The Perl Power Tools: The Unix Reconstruction Project appears to be as complete as it's going to get.
The " Doneness" listing indicates that virtually all of the commands are done, and the last date that something was updated was in June 1999.
It may well be effectively complete. I don't think PPT has taken the world by storm, though...
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What's the Plural of `Virus'?
Well.. since someone posts it on every other
Here is Tom Christiansen and his rant on the plural of virus... viruses
http://language.perl.com/misc/virus.html -
Re:70% == standards pollution?
Standards compliant?
What about this?
Microsoft is openly polluting standards and intentionally breaking portability.
Read that link and tell me its not true. Fire up Netscape in X and visit som?e si?es,? an?d see how?you like it? when??? the ch?racter set?s lo?ok like th?s. -
Re:Interesting precedent- poor default configurati
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Literal programming can automatically document
Literate programming was invented around 1983 by the very famous Donald Knuth, author of the TeX typesetting system and the multi-volume series The Art of Computer Programming. It is based on two important ideas.
The first idea is that good program documentation shouldn't be squeezed into little `comments'. It should be structured more like a technical article for a journal, and it should have all the support that a journal article usually gets, including good typesetting. The programmer should have the opportunity to annotate each section of the code with as much explanation as is necessary and appropriate.
Literate programming is so interesting because the documented parts of the program do not have to be in the same order as the program itself. Code can be written in whatever order is best for people to understand, and re-ordered automatically when the compiler needs to run the program.
Documentation can be typeset automatically using tools to extract the literate comments from the code. For more information on this, see:
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Re:irony
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DBI resources
I learned the perl DBI from Mark Jason-Dominus' Article on Perl.com.
It's quite a good intro, and I'd recommend it to anybody who knows perl fairly well. You don't even have to know much about RDBMS.
That article, paired with the perldoc information on the DBI is fairly decent to at least get started. The perl DBI book reviewed here though is good too if you want to go a bit deeper.
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DBI resources
I learned the perl DBI from Mark Jason-Dominus' Article on Perl.com.
It's quite a good intro, and I'd recommend it to anybody who knows perl fairly well. You don't even have to know much about RDBMS.
That article, paired with the perldoc information on the DBI is fairly decent to at least get started. The perl DBI book reviewed here though is good too if you want to go a bit deeper.
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W3C HTML Tidy and the demoroniser
I'm too lazy to go out and find the urls at the moment, but there are two tools that can fix your MS-Word HTML problems. The W3C now offers "HTML tidy", which includes a handy option to undo word 2000's damage. There is also the "demoroniser", written by a gentleman whose name escapes me and updated by Tom Christiansen et al
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Remember the FAQ
I think we should keep in mind this part of the Perl FAQ.
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Re:Virii?You are wrong. The plural of virus is not viri. Viri is plural of vir, meaning "man." Really the most likely Latin plural is virora like corpora, the plural of neuter corpus. However viruses makes the most sense. From language.perl.com:
First off, the OED gives nothing but viruses for the plural.
Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it's the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don't grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we've started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.
Those confused souls who write *virii are tacitly positing the existence of the non-word *virius, and declining it as though it were like filius. It's true that l/r are both linguals that sometimes get interchanged, and that f/v are just a change in voicing[2], but that's just reaching. *Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie.
The crucial problem here is that, classically speaking, there appears to be no recorded use of virus in the plural. It was a 2nd declension noun ending in -us, which is rather common, but it was also a neuter, which is rather rare. I could only come up with three such 2nd declension neuters: virus (some poison), pelagus (the sea, usually poetically), and vulgus (the crowd). None appear to admit plurals. Perhaps this is because they are mass nouns, not count nouns. [3]
One citation below wonders whether these -us 2nd declension neuters might have inflected -us => -ora, the way the 3rd declension's neuter plurals for tempus and corpus do. There's really not any support for that notion--that I could find at least. If so, that would end up producing *virora. Most other citations think that these plurals just never happened at all, or that if they did, they didn't jump declensions. Perhaps they were invariant as they oddly are for the vocative and accusative cases. In any event, *virora does not fit comfortably in the mouth of an English speaker, which is a good reason to avoid it.[4]
Another theory holds that virus, being a 2nd declension neuter--which we are 100% certain of because its nominative singular is -us and its genitive singular is -i--must go to *vira in the plural as do its -um neuter brethren in the 2nd declension. However, that assumes that it works like a -um form, not as a -us form does. And it really seems to do neither. If it were a -us form (again, as a 2nd declension nominative), then its vocative would have to be *vire; but it's really only virus. You also expect an accusative form *viros, but that too is missing; it's still just virus in the accusative. And if it were a -um form, then its vocative would have to be *virum. But it's not--here again, it's only virus. (Vocative examples of virus are not particularly common. Apparently the Romans seldom addressed their slime in a personal fashion.
So what we have here is something of a mixed or invariant declension. Trying to find a plural for something that didn't take a plural (possibly because it was not a count but a mass noun), or at least, one for which no plural is classically attested, is a fruitless endeavour. Best to stick with English and use viruses.
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Re:Virii?
It's a really, really, weird noun, fairly rare, and, in fact, has never been seen in the plural form in classic texts.
Sure threw me for a loop. I started looking into it on this site about the plural of virus that someone posted earlier, which explained why I was having trouble with it--I took Latin for four years in high school so I was getting embarrassed.
Anyway, it appears there's fairly wild disagreement on what precisely it is, with some even claiming it's fourth declension. (I like the fourth declension explanation and am inclined to accept it more out of contrariness than anything.)
In any case, if it were fourth, the plural of virus would also be virus. Considering that the word meant "slime" there would be no purpose in a plural form, as in English the similar word is a collective noun without a plural. You do not speak of "slimes" (at least not unless you play D&D and fight green slimes).
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Spelling
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Re:Virii isn't a word and neither is Viri
Try reading tchrist's write-up on this.
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Why Perl would benefit from a standard
According to this a group of hardy hackers are hard at work on a complete, from scratch, re-implementation of perl in C++. This reimplementation is supposed to be completely compatible with perl5. How can you guarantee compatibility without a specification? My guess is, in the same way that perl5 broke some obscure perl4 scripts, perl6 will break perl5 scripts - but without a spec, it's impossible to tell which of those breakages are bugs and which are features!
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Pull out your search engine :-)
Seriously, closures are a very specific notion. If you have not seen them it will take you a while to understand what they are, and longer to see why people want them.
Why not start with some documenta tion? I have neither the ability nor the desire to fully explain an entire philosophy of programming in a brief post. Go and read a FAQ if you want to start down that path.
If this seems needlessly arrogant, ask yourself a question. If you wanted to make a comment on the calculus in a forum where some are mathematicians and some are high-school students, would you feel it sufficient to mention that your comment only will make sense to people who understand calculus? This situation is exactly parallel to that.
Cheers,
Ben -
Just Like Perl!Wow! Look at this: it's a new programming language! Gosh, it looks like Perl, smells like perl, feels like perl...
Only without the years of development, the thousands of freely available modules, the extreme flexibility, the massive cross-platform portability (you can configure perl for your toaster), integration with Apache, Database support, tens of thousands of existing experts and freely available sample scripts, a huge set of some of the world's best programming language documentation, and (let's not forget) its own poetry (what other language can claim that?), having the core built by one of the coolest people on earth (read and laugh!).
Maybe Pike is amusing, but next to a language like Perl, is it really needed? And can you really claim that Pike has "character" when you can't even write poetry? (Yes, I am a Perl bigot.)
BTW, Hello world in perl? perl -e 'print "hello, world\n";' on the command line will do the trick. Ha!
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Re:I'm also interestedhttp://www.perl.com/
Best wishes on your pursuits.
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Re:Client-side Perl?What, isn't Safe Perl done yet? There was a lot of (obviously pretty localized) noise about how much better Perl would be than Java or even (or especially?) JavaScript as the extension language for web clients. Ah, it doesn't look like Safe Perl got past the proposal stage back in 1995. Then again, "man Safe" gets me documentation for it. Time for a visit to CPAN!
Safe TCL was actually discussed as a possible extension language for e-mail, with prototypes done in Metamail.
A lot of people have talked about Java's "sandbox" security as being pretty feeble. A language designed from the start to be "Safe" may be able to provide more powerful constructs with fewer vulnerabilities.
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Re:To keep the virus fixers in businessRurik on Friday May 19, @01:51PM GMT
If writers stopped creating virii...
Please see Tom Christiansen's Article on the plural of virus
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Why bother buying books when everything is there?
Hey, there is something like a general thought that I need to discuss with you guys. What the heck are you looking for in books? I have taught myself Perl and created many (powerful) perl programs, but never, never have I needed to read anything in a book. Everything is online, my friends. So why bother buying books? Just for the heck of being part of the "consuming society"? Without me, then! Somebody posted a message about Tom's object-oriented tutorial for perl. THANKS. It is now resting in my reference bookmarks set. You prefer reading stuff on paper? Print it, then. Searching is what people need to learn on the Internet. Because: - the problem you are facing in your programming project has 95% chance of having been faced by somebody before you - searching can be time consuming but with little experience gives you, FOR FREE, all the information, examples, that you need. Of course, don't try to look for relevant information in microsoft knowledge base
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Excelent bookI'm a CPAN developer (I wrote File::Tail), so I know quite a bit about objects, ties and such.
However, I found this book clear, informative and very much worth the price.
I learned a lot from it.