2 naive questions: Perl 6; Perl vs. shell scripts

J

J Krugman

Two very naive, and quite unrelated just-out-of-curiosity questions.

Where is Perl 6? Not that I'm impatient or anything (quite the
contrary, actually; I'd like to master Perl 5 and enjoy the benefits
of this mastery for a little while, before going back to square
1). But I thought already months ago that its release was imminent.
Is it because, as a free software project, there just aren't enough
programmers available for the task? Or is the delay unrelated to
manpower issues?


The second question is: given how much more powerful Perl scripting
is compared to (Unix) shell scripting, I'm surprised that there's
so much shell scripting still out there. Is there any hope that
Perl scripts will replace 95% of the shell scripting out there?
Or are all these shell scripts going to be with us forever, just
like COBOL?

jill
 
B

Ben Morrow

Quoth J Krugman said:
Two very naive, and quite unrelated just-out-of-curiosity questions.

Where is Perl 6? Not that I'm impatient or anything (quite the
contrary, actually; I'd like to master Perl 5 and enjoy the benefits
of this mastery for a little while, before going back to square
1). But I thought already months ago that its release was imminent.
Is it because, as a free software project, there just aren't enough
programmers available for the task? Or is the delay unrelated to
manpower issues?

Not yet designed :). In a recent perl.com column, Allison Randall said
there may be a beta in two years or so, but that is still a guess.
Before it can be written, Larry, Damian et al have to finish thrashing
out the design of the language; I guess parrot (the runtime perl6 will
use) will be finished before that gets done.

You won't have to go back to square one when moving from perl5 to perl6.
Perl6 will still be perl, and the basic concepts and syntax of the
language will be the same. I would imagine that perl5 will continue to
be supported for a long time after perl6 is released, as well.
The second question is: given how much more powerful Perl scripting
is compared to (Unix) shell scripting, I'm surprised that there's
so much shell scripting still out there. Is there any hope that
Perl scripts will replace 95% of the shell scripting out there?
Or are all these shell scripts going to be with us forever, just
like COBOL?

Shell fulfills a slightly different task from perl. If a task primarily
involves invoking external programs it is much easier to code in shell
than in Perl. Also, shell is (under the assumption of Unix-ish) more
portable than perl, so things like system startup scripts and program
configuration scripts *have* to be written in shell, as there is no
guarantee perl is available.

Ben
 
J

John Bokma

J said:
Two very naive, and quite unrelated just-out-of-curiosity questions.

Where is Perl 6? Not that I'm impatient or anything (quite the
contrary, actually; I'd like to master Perl 5 and enjoy the benefits
of this mastery for a little while, before going back to square
1). But I thought already months ago that its release was imminent.

I thought it would take some years.
Is it because, as a free software project, there just aren't enough
programmers available for the task? Or is the delay unrelated to
manpower issues?

I don't have the time to follow all, but I remember all the discussions
eating up a lot of time, as it should. No idea what the status is.
The second question is: given how much more powerful Perl scripting
is compared to (Unix) shell scripting, I'm surprised that there's
so much shell scripting still out there. Is there any hope that
Perl scripts will replace 95% of the shell scripting out there?

No. Some is done in Python, and maybe even PHP
Or are all these shell scripts going to be with us forever, just
like COBOL?

Yes, especially on systems with very limited resources. For example
running Linux of a X MB Flash memory card.
 
T

Tintin

J Krugman said:
The second question is: given how much more powerful Perl scripting
is compared to (Unix) shell scripting, I'm surprised that there's
so much shell scripting still out there. Is there any hope that
Perl scripts will replace 95% of the shell scripting out there?
Or are all these shell scripts going to be with us forever, just
like COBOL?

Right tool for the right job. It pains me when people write a 20 line Perl
program that is essentially:

system("command");
system("another command");

When it can be done elegantly in a 4 line shell script.
 
D

Daniel Pfeiffer

Saluton,

Ben Morrow said:
You won't have to go back to square one when moving from perl5 to perl6.
Perl6 will still be perl, and the basic concepts and syntax of the
language will be the same. I would imagine that perl5 will continue to
be supported for a long time after perl6 is released, as well.

What I have seen of perl6 scares me to hell!

The syntax of scalars, lists and hashes is completely changed. Right now
logically a single value is a scalar and written with $ no matter where it
comes from. In the future this will be way confusing with @ or % to access
some scalars. Not only is it illogical, but it also means relearning and
keeping these things well sorted out in your mind.

Likewise, the new possibilities of regexes sound fantastic, but why did they
have to go and change so much in the existing regex syntax???

If I get this right, perl6 will behave like perl5 if the package keyword
appears. That can smooth the way somewhat, but for every source, you'll still
have to rewrite it all once you want to use some new stuff. ARGHHH!

I think perl5 will have a very long life!

coralament / best Grötens / liebe Grüße / best regards / elkorajn salutojn
Daniel Pfeiffer
 
T

Tad McClellan

Daniel Pfeiffer said:
Saluton,



What I have seen of perl6 scares me to hell!


Me too.

But what I had seen of Perl 5 scared me. I got over it.

What I had seen of Perl 4 scared me. I got over it.

We will get over it. :)

I think perl5 will have a very long life!


Me too.

Even grungy old Perl 4 lived for many years, and the v4 to v5 "delta"
was less than the v5 to v6 transition will be.
 
M

Michele Dondi

What I have seen of perl6 scares me to hell!

Well, some of the things I've seen/understood of Perl6 scare me and
some fascinate me.

As I wrote in another post/thread, I have a *slight* impression that
while on the one hand it will definitely still be *Perl*, OTOH it will
be *slightly* less magic...
The syntax of scalars, lists and hashes is completely changed. Right now
^^^^^^

Semantics, I'd say...
logically a single value is a scalar and written with $ no matter where it
comes from. In the future this will be way confusing with @ or % to access

Yes, I agree that it will take some time to get used to the new
behaviour(s), and this will probably be the biggest PITA. I genuinely
wonder wether one day I'll regret Perl5 handling of these things or
complain about how things used to be bad those days...
;-)

Oh, and once (IIRC) I had heard one thing about Perl6 that I could not
find again later on, namely that it would have had a parser
configurable at runtime. Was that just an idea that was subsequently
rejected?


Michele
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -lp
BEGIN{*ARGV=do{open $_,q,<,,\$/;$_}}s z^z seek DATA,11,$[;($,
=ucfirst<DATA>)=~s x .*x q^~ZEX69l^^q,^2$;][@,xe.$, zex,s e1e
q 1~BEER XX1^q~4761rA67thb ~eex ,s aba m,P..,,substr$&,$.,age
__END__
 

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