|
Why Would You Want To Use Perl Scripts?
|
|
|
| 3.7/5.0 (3 votes total) |
|
|
|
Trever Dellinious June 29, 2006
|
Trever Dellinious |
Trever Dellinious’s idea of a good time is snuggling up with his laptop
next to a cozy fire on a cold winter day, and writing elegant programs
in perl. To learn more about perl scripts and their application go to www.allperlscripts.info.
|
Trever Dellinious
has written 1 articles for CGIDir. |
View all articles by Trever Dellinious... |
First let me tell you the history of Perl scripts and then I will go
into why I think Perl is the best overall programming language that
there is. Perl is a programming language created by Larry Wall in 1987.
It is based mainly on the programming language C but also borrows
features from many other languages. Many people new to this language
think that it is written PERL and is an acronym but that is not the
true name and is a way that “insiders” identify “outsiders” in this
programming language’s world.
Perl was originally named “Pearl”
after the parable of Jesus Christ in the Bible that talks about a man
who found a pearl in a field and immediately went and sold all that he
had in order to buy the pearl. Otherwise known as the story of “the
Pearl of Great Price,” the pearl originally was a symbol for the
kingdom of heaven something obviously of great value and it was this
idea of great value that Larry named his language. Unfortunately Larry
found that there was already a programming language named “pearl” and
so he shortened the name to Perl. The original manual had a camel as
the cover picture and the symbol of the camel has becomes Perl’s
official symbol.
Although it is not an acronym it has become
known as Perl – practical extraction and report language. This is a
good description of the tasks that Perl scripts are good for that is
data in the form of text that are found in lists, programs, etc.
Because it is good at these things it has widely been used like glue in
the programming world, that is it can be used as an interfacing
language to run programs together that were not originally designed to
be compatible. Its use on the popular LAMP platform for web development
is an obvious application for these abilities to interface. This is a
main reason why this should be of interest to you, the ultimate
internet marketer. Other popular applications or in the informatics
world where it can be used to manage large and complex databases.
Perl
is either loved or hated. Those who hate on Perl scripts cite their
ugly and “write only” format. This references the programming
language’s complex use of punctuation and symbols, making its
readability not the greatest and often such that you can’t go back and
look at the code and easily understand what the programmer was
intending. Those who love Perl talk of its ease of use and its wide
range of application.
|
|
|