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Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People
Ravi writes "Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) — the language which was created by Larry Wall is arguably one of the greatest programming languages. But it has a reputation for taking an excessive cryptic nature which gives it an image especially among Perl novices as a language which is complex and hard to master. Minimal Perl: for Unix and Linux people, authored by Tim Maher and published by Manning Publications addresses the obstacles presented by Perl's complexity. This book which is divided into two parts comprising of a total of 12 chapters takes a unique methodology to explain the Perl syntax and its use. The author emphasizes on Perl's grep, awk and sed like features and relys on concepts such as inputs, filters and arguments to allow Unix users to directly apply their existing knowledge to the task of learning Perl." Read on for the rest of Ravi's review.
Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People
author
Tim Maher
pages
464
publisher
Manning Publications
rating
8
reviewer
Ravi
ISBN
1932394508
summary
Provides a slice of Perl which when mastered can accomplish most of the jobs which require Perl
What I found while reading this book is that the "Minimal Perl" is a specially crafted subset of Perl language designed to be easily grasped by people who have a Unix background and who wish to use Perl to write their scripts. Its aim is to filter out the complex way of writing programs using Perl and whenever possible to accomplish tasks using just one or two lines of Perl. In the first part of the book, the author explains how Perl can be used to do the same tasks as accomplished by common Unix tools such as grep, awk, sed and find. He goes one step further by explaining how one can accomplish much more and in a much simpler way by using Perl techniques.
Throughout the book, the author makes sure that the learning curve in acquiring Perl skills remain gentle. Perl is a language whose syntax has a multitude of options, this book is peppered with numerous tables which provide excellent information at a glance. For example, in the third chapter titled "Perl as a (Better) grep command", the author lists and compares the fundamental capabilities of Perl and the different grep commands such as grep, egrep and fgrep which clearly shows the advantages that Perl has over grep. In another table, you get a birds eye view of the essential syntax of Perl's regular expressions and their meaning. This chapter alone has around 12 tables. This is a really nice feature because it doubles as a Perl reference where you can flip to the respective page and get the information you need.
The main strength and drawback of a language such as Perl is its dependence on regular expressions for accomplishing complex tasks. Once you master the regular expressions, the sky is the limit for ordering and segregating data using this language. In Perl, there is more than one way of doing the same thing. What is unique about this book is that the author specializes in explaining the easiest way of doing a particular task.
In many places, the author demonstrates complex tasks using just a few lines of Perl code. Many of the examples covered in this book are practical examples which give an idea of how the commands relate to the final outcome. For instance, while elaborating on the one line grep like commands in Perl, the author illustrates a web oriented application of pattern matching where he shows how to extract and list, the outline of slashdot.org site's front page. The surprising thing is this is accomplished using just a single line of Perl code. This book has lots of such one line examples which teache how to use Perl intelligently using minimal effort.
If part I of this book focuses on ways in which simple Perl programs can provide superior alternatives to standard Unix commands, the second part throws light on the other aspects of Perl concentrating on the syntax of the language and various built-in functions and modules available which do away with a lot of re-invention of the wheel, so to speak, and helps churn out code which is portable.
Chapter 7 titled "Built-in functions" introduces an eclectic mix of functions available in Perl. You have functions which are used to extract a list of fields from a string, functions to access the current date and time, generating random numbers, sorting lists, transforming lists, managing files with functions and so on. These functions are broadly classified into those which generate and process scalars and those that process lists.
In chapter 8 of this book, the author involves the reader on the numerous scripting techniques that can be used to write better Perl programs.
It was quite surprising that the author has chosen to discuss the variables, more specifically the list variables comprising of arrays and hashes, as well as the looping constructs only in the 9th and 10th chapters, when they should be somewhere up front. In hind sight, I feel it is a good decision. Once you execute the one liner Perl programs in the initial chapters, you will be fairly confident in using Perl by the time you reach the 9th chapter.
The last two chapters deal with creating sub-routines and modules. Over the years various Perl programmers have created modules which are used for diverse purposes. With an aim to share these modules, they are collected and stored at one central place known as CPAN, which is an acronym for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. The final chapter, apart from teaching how to create modules in Perl and manage them, also introduces the CPAN and ways in which one can find the right module by searching on CPAN.
The special variables cheat-sheet and the guidelines for parenthesizing code provided in the two appendices are really useful as a quick reference while writing Perl programs.
This is not a comprehensive book on Perl, rather the author provides a slice of Perl which when mastered can accomplish most of the jobs which require Perl. You won't find object oriented concepts of Perl being mentioned in this book. In many ways the author has moved beyond explaining a subset of Perl by providing a section titled "Directions for further study" at the end of each chapter, where the author lists further material which can be used to learn more about the topic that is covered.
I really enjoyed going through this book, especially because of its focus on the practical side of using Perl and taking a minimal approach.
Ravi Kumar maintains a blog titled "All about Linux" where he shares his thoughts and experiences in using Linux, Open Source and Free software.
You can purchase Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Throughout the book, the author makes sure that the learning curve in acquiring Perl skills remain gentle. Perl is a language whose syntax has a multitude of options, this book is peppered with numerous tables which provide excellent information at a glance. For example, in the third chapter titled "Perl as a (Better) grep command", the author lists and compares the fundamental capabilities of Perl and the different grep commands such as grep, egrep and fgrep which clearly shows the advantages that Perl has over grep. In another table, you get a birds eye view of the essential syntax of Perl's regular expressions and their meaning. This chapter alone has around 12 tables. This is a really nice feature because it doubles as a Perl reference where you can flip to the respective page and get the information you need.
The main strength and drawback of a language such as Perl is its dependence on regular expressions for accomplishing complex tasks. Once you master the regular expressions, the sky is the limit for ordering and segregating data using this language. In Perl, there is more than one way of doing the same thing. What is unique about this book is that the author specializes in explaining the easiest way of doing a particular task.
In many places, the author demonstrates complex tasks using just a few lines of Perl code. Many of the examples covered in this book are practical examples which give an idea of how the commands relate to the final outcome. For instance, while elaborating on the one line grep like commands in Perl, the author illustrates a web oriented application of pattern matching where he shows how to extract and list, the outline of slashdot.org site's front page. The surprising thing is this is accomplished using just a single line of Perl code. This book has lots of such one line examples which teache how to use Perl intelligently using minimal effort.
If part I of this book focuses on ways in which simple Perl programs can provide superior alternatives to standard Unix commands, the second part throws light on the other aspects of Perl concentrating on the syntax of the language and various built-in functions and modules available which do away with a lot of re-invention of the wheel, so to speak, and helps churn out code which is portable.
Chapter 7 titled "Built-in functions" introduces an eclectic mix of functions available in Perl. You have functions which are used to extract a list of fields from a string, functions to access the current date and time, generating random numbers, sorting lists, transforming lists, managing files with functions and so on. These functions are broadly classified into those which generate and process scalars and those that process lists.
In chapter 8 of this book, the author involves the reader on the numerous scripting techniques that can be used to write better Perl programs.
It was quite surprising that the author has chosen to discuss the variables, more specifically the list variables comprising of arrays and hashes, as well as the looping constructs only in the 9th and 10th chapters, when they should be somewhere up front. In hind sight, I feel it is a good decision. Once you execute the one liner Perl programs in the initial chapters, you will be fairly confident in using Perl by the time you reach the 9th chapter.
The last two chapters deal with creating sub-routines and modules. Over the years various Perl programmers have created modules which are used for diverse purposes. With an aim to share these modules, they are collected and stored at one central place known as CPAN, which is an acronym for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. The final chapter, apart from teaching how to create modules in Perl and manage them, also introduces the CPAN and ways in which one can find the right module by searching on CPAN.
The special variables cheat-sheet and the guidelines for parenthesizing code provided in the two appendices are really useful as a quick reference while writing Perl programs.
This is not a comprehensive book on Perl, rather the author provides a slice of Perl which when mastered can accomplish most of the jobs which require Perl. You won't find object oriented concepts of Perl being mentioned in this book. In many ways the author has moved beyond explaining a subset of Perl by providing a section titled "Directions for further study" at the end of each chapter, where the author lists further material which can be used to learn more about the topic that is covered.
I really enjoyed going through this book, especially because of its focus on the practical side of using Perl and taking a minimal approach.
Ravi Kumar maintains a blog titled "All about Linux" where he shares his thoughts and experiences in using Linux, Open Source and Free software.
You can purchase Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People? Is this the result of a perlgolf competition between perl-related books?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
So wrong! Just look at the following example:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
length q caller vec and print chr oct ord q qx eq and print chr ord q ref or and print chr ord q or no and print chr ord q else and print chr ord qq q q and print chr ord q tie gt and print chr ord qw q sin q and print chr ord q q eq and print chr ord qw q sin q and print chr ord q sin s and print chr ord q cmp lc and print chr ord q split s and print chr ord qw q lc q and print chr ord q ne sin and print chr hex length q q bless localtime ref q
Run that. Nothing cryptic or complex at all.
(BTW, it prints "Perl is simple!")
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
That is all...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Nope.
:-D
Stands for Python'll Eventually Replace this Language.
or, optionally:
Perl Eats Ruby for Lunch
My blog
I use Python for most of my real scripting needs (i.e. any script that goes into a file and is over 10 lines long). I find Python to be a much easier language to think in and write. The biggest attraction of Perl for me is as a better awk and sed. Almost all of my Perl uses are of the sort "perl -pe 'xxxx'" . It seems the book is aimed at users like me.
Useful review.
I'm currently going through http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sed2/, but I can see my using perl the more I do website programming. Would an experience scripter suggest that I switch to perl (for it seems it can perform similar text manipulation functions conveniently in a programming lanuage), or spend more time with sed/awk?
I'll probably do both incidentally, but opinions would be appreciated. It seems everyone rates perl.
I was going to switch to Python, but apparently Perl is better for smaller/one line regexp manipulation in scripts, and python for building large applications.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
8/10 is a *good* review. You've been reading too many IGN game reviews.
IGN scoring works like this:
5/10 - The game runs
6/10 - The game is an FPS
7/10 - The game has team-based mulitplayer online play
8/10 - The game runs at 190 frames-per-second
9/10 - The game is made by a publisher that buys advertising on IGN
10/10 - The game is made by a publisher that buys A LOT of advertising on IGN
#!/usr/bin/perl -w /home/me/file_to_be_removed");
##Oh boy I'm using an advanced scripting language!
system("/usr/local/bin/csh csh.script_1");
system("/bin/rm
system("/usr/local/bin/application & application_output ");
system("/usr/local/bin/csh csh.script_2");
#
system("/bin/cat "I know Perl" > resume.txt");
exit
You just type on Slashdot all day long. And then one day... you learn how to format and preview.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
I think Windows folks need "Minimal Perl" a lot more.
Just remembering by boss's jaw drop when he asked me if I could do a quick analysis of a couple thousand lines of logs and asked how long it would take. "10 minutes." And I delivered. He thought I'd have to fire up VS and write some C code.
He borrowed my Camel book during his next vacation.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I used Perl for fun and profit (wrote many Perl scripts for a speech software company) for many years, hanging on past the point where others started using Python, PHP, and Ruby instead. I knew Perl and could practically think in it. But one of the main problems with Perl is it's so easy to right totally unmaintainable, totally unreadable code. I read a Perl program I wrote a few years ago and I can never figure it out. The object-oriented part of Perl is a ridiculous kludge with so many little details that I can't remember them all. There are about 100 subtly different ways to write a constructor for your object:
sub new() {
my ($class) = @_;
my $self = {}
return bless $self, $class
}
sub new() { return bless {} }
sub new() {
my ($class) = @_
my $self = {}
bless $self, (ref $class || $class)
}
All of these, of course, have subtly different behaviors. The second will break inheritance. The third will allow you to use the constructor as an instance method, not just a class method. There are no enforced function prototypes or standard way to get parameters... and if you do use the *optional* prototype mechanism, you will subtly change the precedence of calls to your function.
I thought that having 1000 ways to do something was great, but it turns out to be a nightmare for non-trivial programs. Every time I try to use a cute fancy shortcut in Perl, it bites me in the ass. As a result of the over-flexibility, people have tried to impose "standards" on Perl. There are "standard" techniques for named parameters, "standard" techniques for accessor functions, etc. And that's nice, but Perl has 10,000+ available modules to do everything from screen-scrape Google news to access Oracle databases (it's greatest strength!!!). And not all those modules use the standard techniques.
About a year ago I decided to give Python a try. And I haven't looked back. It can do everything Perl can do, and then some. Everything is clearer and having a "standard" way to do most things makes learning new modules immensely easier. Having slightly more verbose syntax and strict type-checking is slightly annoying at first, but keeps me sane in the long run.
Basically I don't use perl for anything other than one-liner regexp tricks anymore. Stuff like perl -i -pe 's/FOO/BAR/g' *, which will change the string FOO to BAR in all the files in the current directory.
My bicyles
Very useful if you need to use text files from DOS/Windows and DOX2UNIX is not installed:
perl -e "while(<>){s/\r//;print;}"
This strips carriage returns out of a file, and does it pretty quickly.
www.wavefront-av.com
Perl newbie here.
..
Is it just me, or is it possible to create perfectly legible code in Perl if you use good technique, just like in any other language?
The cryptic/convoluted stuff only comes out when you try to be too cute.
The only 'strange' thing with Perl is its use of symbols to denote things. That is not really that big of a deal, and in fact makes working with code a bit easier, IMO, since you know loosely what type a variable is just by looking at it and the context of the code that surrounds it.
The thing I've noticed, as a Perl programmer, is that it is the *only* language I've ever used (amongst bash, c, c++, java, rexx, fortran, basic) that I can take a break from for a year, come back, and be able to write a simple script without the need to refer to any books or online manuals. That is VERY useful for those of us who are more sysadmins than programmers. This power is partly due to the "more than one way to do it" philosophy, that lets you program in a style that works for you, hence allowing you to remember *how* to write in that language.
Then again, that's what most anti-Perl folks bitch about. Any language can be obfuscated. If you write hard to decipher code in Perl, you'll write it that way in any language.
How do you avoid using regular expressions? What do you replace them with? And how can they be confused with binary?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Remeber that a "Backronym" (hate that word!) is a subtype of acronym.
Would Muhammad Ali's GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) line of food products be considered a snackronym or a blackronym?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This: http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl/pickingUpPerl.pdf guide is awesome if you want to learn Perl. Concise and articulate, it manages to explain all the major topics of Perl in 66 pages. I recommend working through the entire guide as quick as possible, don't worry about remembering everything as you can always come back to it later. I also recommend having the O'Reilly camel books (Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Perl Cookbook) handy when going through the guide. You can read the books here:
http://www.jimsannex.com/Studies/CD_perl/index.htm but you better go out and buy the real thing, worth every penny!!! If your running Windows you'll need to download Perl and a good editor with syntax highlighting:
w s/5.8/ActivePerl-5.8.8.820-MSWin32-x86-274739.msi
http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Windo
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
After you install perl open a command prompt and run ppm, this is your simple GUI gateway to CPAN packages (make a mental note). After you get a handle on basic perl checkout Perl/Tk (GUI Toolkit for Perl). The Tk packages are included and installed with ActivePerl... Here's your first Perl/TK program:
use Tk;
my $top = new MainWindow;
$top->configure(-title=>"My First Perl GUI Program");
my $lab = $top->Label(-textvariable=>\$labelText);
my $b = $top->Button(-text=>'Click Me!', -command=>sub {$labelText="Congratulations! it worked!" });
$lab->grid(-row=>0, -column=>0);
$b->grid(-row=>1, -column=>0);
MainLoop;
Stuff like perl -i -pe 's/FOO/BAR/g' *, which will change the string FOO to BAR in all the files in the current directory.
Sed will do that too:
sed -i 's/FOO/BAR/g' *
The review says that the book uses the reader's knowledge of sed, awk, and grep. I figure: why not just use sed, awk, and grep...however, one advantage for Perl here is that (I presume) that line works with any Perl; '-i' is a GNU sed extension and may not work on non-GNU seds...
Penny - plain text accounting
You're not looking at it right.
KISS is hard. Very hard. It's different in different places. Sometimes keeping it simple means writing less code. Sometimes it means creating a new sub-language that better describes your problem.
In perl, you can change the nature of the language itself. *Everything* can be changed. The idea is that if there is more than one way to do it, then you can do it the simplest way for whatever definition of simple is required.
Maintaining consistency is up to the developer himself. Obviously, those tempted to succumb to the lure of sloppiness (which, unfortunately, in my experience, is every perl programmer I've ever met including myself) shouldn't use perl for really big projects.
You can't blame the language for giving you that freedom, though.
Perl is where it is because you don't have to change the way that you think in order to program in it. Perl will change how it works to match how you think, which makes it more convenient than almost any other language.
That particular behavior is what makes it possible to have so many perl modules in existane, which in turn is responsible for the popularity. It's also why about half of those modules have bugs so horrible that they're unusable. It's certainly a tradeoff.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Languages that enforce legibility (Python is great for that)
A language which makes a semantic distinction between tabs and spaces may give the appearance of enforcing legibility but in fact does little useful to help legibility.
A programming language should not make a distinction on meaning based on whether tabs or spaces are used; all whitespace should be regarded equaly (except, understandably, end of line characters).
Otherwise, python seems ok. I just wish it had a whitespace-agnostic mode.
*I* cannot visualy tell the difference between tabs and spaces, why should the programming language?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I was a Python afficionado, although most of my professional experience was with Java. Then I joined a Perl project. I was open minded, any language can be good in the right hands. Now, two and a half years later, I'm pretty good at it.
As the team grows, we find ourselves relying more and more on standard techniques. They're not your standard techniques, they're just what we came up with as our standard way. They work well. We have a beautiful object oriented mod_perl/Template Toolkit system, unit tests, RoboDoc, the works. We know how to do this.
But, exactly as you say, we need coding standards. Lots. Just to make code more comprehensible, it needs to look pretty uniform. We can do that.
But then, note that objects are just hashes. Sometimes, you get odd data in them, due to some bug. Where did that happen? Of course you use grep, but there are so many ways to put something into a hash, that you run into problems. So you use getters and setters and make sure that all the code everywhere uses them.
But even things like renaming functions... different calling syntax can make it hard to grep for uses of a function, even. It's getting too ridiculous. Our book of coding standards is getting so thick that we could be coding fucking Java instead, and feel liberated. It's madness.
So, yes, you can do Perl for larger projects. It's possible. But you have to tie yourself down so badly, most of Perl's strengths as a language can't be used.
Now I want to get back to Python or Java...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
His usage of "it's" is correct. It's = it is.
I've been programming perl for 10 years. I've written enough XS modules to be sadly familiar with perlguts and perlapi. I've used perl for a huge array of applications, not excluding some pretty twisted apache hacks using mod_perl. I write perl code every day in my job.
Lately however, I've grown more and more frustrated with this language. Here's some reasons why:
muddled standard library While CPAN's depth has been a model for many programming languages to come after perl, it's anarchy kills me. The number of different CPAN modules to deal with time/date manipulation is silly. Newer languages have had the luxury of much more structured standard libraries that make much more sense as a whole. object oriented perl is a hack It may be possible that some very disciplined group of perl programmers have achieved that holy grail of pure OO perl in such a manner that the benefits of OO programming are available to them. In real life, most OO perl programmers are bombarded with example code, third party modules, and CPAN modules that are not OO. Because of this, most perl code falls back on it's procedural roots out of frustration. You can blame this on the programmers, but this doesn't happen nearly as much in Ruby or Python. lack of modern frameworks I'm still waiting for Rails or Django for perl. Catalyst is nice, but a bit disparate, and it just doesn't have the traction or the cohesion that the first-class frameworks do. It used to be that all the cool stuff was done in perl first (example: mod_perl). This isn't the case anymore. bindings for other languages are no longer hard to find It used to be that every cool project/library would only come with perl bindings. Stuff like mod_perl or perl-magick were all you got. These days, however, bindings for other languages are almost just as pervasive, and often better written. For example, the perl AGI bindings in Asterisk PBX aren't nearly as well done or supported as the bindings in other languages.(yes I pre-ran them both multiple times to reduce cache affects)
:#]+/, $_); $c += $#t; } print "c == $#t\n";'
./ctok ../../tests/ctok.in.2 " :#"
[src] $ time perl -e '$tdata = "../../tests/ctok.in.2"; $sz = -s $tdata; print "sz == $sz\n"; open(FH, $tdata); while (<FH>) { @t=split(/[
sz == 96252007
c == 12301001
real 0m31.877s
user 0m31.662s
sys 0m0.148s
[src] $ file ctok
ctok: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, not stripped
[src] $ time
sz == 96252007
c == 12301001
real 0m2.417s
user 0m2.280s
sys 0m0.132s
And yet I still proudly use C. Let the prophets K&R reign supreme.
That's a pretty common way of implementing objects in perl, but it is, of course, not the only way... The current thinking seems to be we should all switch to using "Inside-Out Objects" (briefly: object data is moved to class data, and the object only needs to be a unique id to pick out the correct values from the class data -- so you bless a scalar ref, and get a lightweight object which stringifies to a unique id). The point being that if you do things this way, you really *have* to use the accessors, you can't cheat and treat the object as a hash reference any more. Unfortunately, last I looked there was some argument about what precisely was the right way to do this (there's some issue with thread support), though the best publicized way of doing it certainly the one recommended by Damien Conway in his newish book "Perl Best Practices".
If you're not interested in re-writing your entire code-base to conform to someone's notion of "Best Practices", myself I might suggest looking into "lock_keys" in the Hash::Util module. You could adopt the practice of doing a lock_keys on the hashref at the end of the object/creation initialization stage, and then if anyone accidentally tries to create a new hash field later, it will throw an error. A simple, effective trick, and I wish it were better publicized...
On occasion I wonder how hard it would be to write an automated test that would look for cases where someone has done a "$obj->{hash_field}"...
In general, coding standards are important, and where the language is really flexible, they arguably become even more important -- but I think a lot of that problem can be solved with some good automated testing. For example, there's a CPAN module called Perl::Critic that will do things for you like check to make sure your code matches a given set of coding standards (it defaults to Conway's "Best Practices", as I remember it).
If only Python didn't require the use of whitespace for defining blocks. It is indeed tragic that an otherwise fine language is so goddamn retarded in that one aspect.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Actually, pseudohashes made everything slower, so they've been long deprecated and won't be in Perl 5.10.
how to invest, a novice's guide
You've put your finger on it. Perl has many cool features, great strengths, and great depth. But it gives you almost no restrictions on how to combine them. Seductive, but not so good in the long run.
My bicyles
Hmm, that seems a round-about way to do things. I presume you never happened to run into some of the nice features in Emacs python-mode, specifically python-shift-left and python-shift-right which will move the selected region left or right one python indent (that is, as many spaces as you have set for your block indentation in python-mode). Usually these are bound to "C-c <" and "C-c >" which lets you easily select a region (such as a pasted block) and move it to the correct indent level very quickly.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You know, it seems like *everyone* is put off by this aspect of Python at first. The first time I looked at it, it drove me nuts, and then I ignored Python for another two years.
But once I actually tried to write a program in Python, I found I didn't mind it one bit. Within a few hours my eyes didn't get confused by the lack of braces. I think it's actually easier on the eyes once you get used to it.
So I can't say, "don't knock it", because I've done that myself for sure. But do give Python another look, maybe play around with the tutorial for an hour or two.
My bicyles
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
>>> if True: a = 0; b = 1; c = 2; print a, b, c
0 1 2
>>>
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Python was one of my first programming languages, and the whitespace thing made sense to me from the beginning. In most C-style code, people use both braces and indentation to denote blocks; isn't that redundant? It seems braces are for the compiler and indentation is for human readers. Shouldn't higher level languages be designed for humans rather than machines?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Yay! Let's reinvent the wheel by writing 10, 20, or more lines of code for something regular expressions would be able to handle in one. Furthermore, let's claim this is done for the sake of keeping the code 'pretty,' because it's far too embarrassing to admit that we don't really understand how to use regular expressions!
Hmm, like string functions that allow the use of regular expressions to make your string manipulation quick, efficient, and useful?
Yes, regex can be an odd concept to deal with at first, as they tend to be quite a bit more succinct than the languages you're more familiar with. Are you aware, however, that regular expressions can contain comments and extra whitespace?
Maybe you're paid by the line of code, or am attempting to squeeze in every extraneous hour of programming to inflate your consultant fee. If that's the case, I would certainly recommend avoiding regular expressions; they save far too much time and work entirely too well.
LegendMUD