perl should be improved and perl6

T

Tad J McClellan

Gordon Etly said:
David said:
David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus) wrote: [...]
So emacs is an acronym for Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping.

No, the man page for "emacs" defines it as "emacs - GNU project
Emacs", while for perl (either via man or perldoc) defines it as
"perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language".

But neather of those are definitions, there abstracts.

That may be, and perhaps definition was too strong a wording to describe
it, but it's still written as providing some sort of meaning for each
letter in Perl, in Perl's own documentation.

Giving a meaning for each letter results in an acronym, and using all
caps or all lowercase to describe an acronym that has no explicit mixed
case should be fair game, should it not?

There for


That was unfortunate...

the FAQ that says not to use "PERL" should be corrected imho,


It could be corrected from:

But never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym,
apocryphal folklore and post-facto expansions notwithstanding.

to something like:

But never write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym,
and you will look silly if you spell it like that.

as it is perfectly reasonable to use it as "perl" or "PERL" when
referring to it as an acronym.


Whether it is right or wrong, documented or not does not matter
much with regard to whether to write "PERL" or not.

Why do people apply a stigma to those who use it?

From their *observed experience*.

There is a strong correlation between spelling it that way and
being a post that I would rather skip reading.

Q: Is that right?
A: Doesn't matter, because the heuristic *works* whether right or wrong.




So, how can we make it OK to spell it PERL?

Simply change the observed experience so that it is no longer effective.

ie. impart clue by pointing out that it is not spelled "PERL".

When "PERL" and "I want to skip this one" are no longer related,
then people will stop depending on the information that those
rules of thumb currently provide to us.
 
G

Gordon Etly

Tad said:
Whether it is right or wrong, documented or not does not matter
much with regard to whether to write "PERL" or not.

How can it suddenly not matter what the documentation that coems with
Perl says?!? I says

How does giving "Practical Extraction and Report Language" as a
definition for "perl" not an acronym, and how does that not make using
PERL perfectly acceptable?

It appears to me that most of you who are so bent against the usage of
"PERL" are missing or just plain ignoring 'perldoc perl' and looking for
any excuse, any technicality, anything at all it seems in effort to
refute the claims, all of which are contrary to what Perl's own
documentation.

Is it that you don't like being challenged about something you hold so
dear and just cannot accept that there may be another perspective to it?
Are you so inflexible you cannot even acknowledge the validity of this
view? It wont kill ya' to look at a different point of view, ya' know :)

I full-heartedly believe that that FAQ is contradicted by 'perldoc perl'
and that it should be corrected.
 
A

Andrew DeFaria

Gordon said:
How can it suddenly not matter what the documentation that coems with
Perl says?!? I says

How does giving "Practical Extraction and Report Language" as a
definition for "perl" not an acronym, and how does that not make using
PERL perfectly acceptable?
Gordon, you're talking sense. They don't want to hear it. In order to
hear it would require that they admit they are wrong. They are not
willing to do that. This is all the definition of a pinhead.
 
G

Gordon Etly

Keith said:
If you believe this, compose a patch and submit it to the FAQ
maintainer.

I will consider doing that. Thank you.
Personally, I don't write PERL just because it looks stupid,

What makes it so stupid? perldoc gives a meaning for each letter in
"perl", and "PERL" is just another way to write that.


$ perldoc perl | head -6 | tail -2

NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language



And this meaning is widely known (here is just one of about a dozen
different acronym sites:)

acronymfinder.com/acronym.aspx?rec={9929633B-89E8-11D4-8351-00C04FC2C2BF}

What does PERL stand for?

Practical Extraction and Report Language

but I don't care what other people write, as long as they don't
post something like

"Why doesn't this work?

% PERL myperl.pl
-bash: PERL: command not found
Help!"

This is not what is being discussed. This is incorrectly typing the name
of a program in your search path. It's no different than if one typed
BASH instead of bash or LS instead of ls. <[1]>

What //is// being discussed is that the use of "PERL" in general instead
of it always being shot down. Seeing as the official documentation
states a meaning for each latter, it should be fair game to use "perl"
or "PERL" as an acronym, and anyone who reads 'perldoc perl'/'man perl'.

At the very least those saying one who uses "PERL" to refer to the
language displays ignorance could be very wrong, as one who uses it to
refer to the language could just be following what they've read on the
first page of the documentation.

OTOH, I find it difficult to support your claim that perldoc perl
contradicts the FAQ, especially since perldoc perl calls it "Perl"
throughout.

It may use Perl throhhgout, but again, at the very beginning:

$ perldoc perl | head -6 | tail -2

NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language


The NAME line uses "perl" and gives //a// meaning for each letter, each
one capitalized. This alone should make using "PERL" perfectly valid.
Yes, it has been tradition //not// to use "PERL" but just because
something is tradition doesn't mean it's infallible and that it can't be
looked at in another way. That is all I'm trying to do here.


<[1]> That specific example uses bash (and implies some sort of UNIX
based environment), though systems where case does not matter, such as
on Windows and MS-DOS, "PERL myperl.pl" works just fine. Even under bash
via cygwin.

The filename of the Perl binary itself is lowercase in such systems,
though in some file systems where everything is always uppercase (like
in pure MS-DOS), then the binary would be PERL. This is also true for
CD's burned in certain formats.
 
R

RedGrittyBrick

Gordon said:
It appears to me that most of you who are so bent against the usage of
"PERL" are missing or just plain ignoring 'perldoc perl'

perldoc perl
NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

SYNOPSIS
perl ...

If you're new to Perl, ...


I note that perldoc perl does NOT say
NAME
PERL - Practical Extraction and Report Language

SYNOPSIS
PERL ...

If you're new to PERL, ...


QED
 
G

Gordon Etly

RedGrittyBrick said:
perldoc perl
NAME
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

SYNOPSIS
perl ...

If you're new to Perl, ...


I note that perldoc perl does NOT say
NAME
PERL - Practical Extraction and Report Language

SYNOPSIS
PERL ...

If you're new to PERL, ...

It also does not say "Perl" in the NAME line, but "perl". "PERL" comes
from the abbreviating of "Practical Extraction and Report Language"...
and why it shouldn't be a problem to use "PERL".
 
R

RedGrittyBrick

Gordon said:
It also does not say "Perl" in the NAME line, but "perl". "PERL" comes
from the abbreviating of "Practical Extraction and Report Language"...

As you know, there is a difference between an abbreviation and an
acronym. I'm guessing you don't actually pronounce PERL as an abbreviation.

See also mention of PERL in
http://wordsmith.org/words/backronym.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

and why it shouldn't be a problem to use "PERL".

AFAIK the capitalised PERL appears nowhere in the documentation. Other
than where Perlfaq -q differences says not to use PERL. None of my Perl
books use PERL. Larry wall doesn't use PERL. That's enough for me.

The only problem would be if you care about occasionally being mistaken
for an ignorant beginner or for someone who enjoys being deliberately
perverse ;-)
 
G

Gordon Etly

RedGrittyBrick said:
As you know, there is a difference between an abbreviation and an
acronym. I'm guessing you don't actually pronounce PERL as an
abbreviation.
See also mention of PERL in
http://wordsmith.org/words/backronym.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

This is all just a technicality that misses the point, which is the
//official documentation// gives a definition for PERL. The point is,
since the //official documentation// give it, it should be fine to use
PERL.
AFAIK the capitalised PERL appears nowhere in the documentation. Other
than where Perlfaq -q differences says not to use PERL. None of my
Perl books use PERL. Larry wall doesn't use PERL. That's enough for
me.

The //official documentation// defines PERL as being "Practical
Extraction and Report Language", and therefore should be acceptable.
Even Larry Wall gave "Practical Extraction and Report Language" as a
definition, and another (though I think we can all agree the other one
was more in jest.) No, it's not an official definition, but it appears
in the //official documentation// and that's enough for me.

The only problem would be if you care about occasionally being
mistaken for an ignorant beginner or for someone who enjoys being
deliberately perverse ;-)

It's just as arguable that those accusing people of being ignorant are
themselves ignorant of the //official documentation// ;-)
 
A

Andrew DeFaria

Glenn said:
Note that the perldocs are also //official documentation//, and you
can see that the //official documentation// (perldoc -q difference)
says 'never write "PERL", because perl isn't really an acronym'.
What does this tell you? Well it tells most intelligent, logical and
social human beings that reasonable people can reasonably have different
opinions on the matter. Now, of course, if we could just get you people
to be reasonable and not have to beat up on others who differ on the
subject...
 
G

Gordon Etly

Glenn said:
Note that the perldocs are also //official documentation//, and you
can see that the //official documentation// (perldoc -q difference)
says 'never write "PERL", because perl isn't really an acronym'.

Then the "difference" and the previous mentioned FAQ should be
mentioned, because the main document gives "Practical Extraction and
Report Language", which can be condensed to just "PERL". It's in the
main document so why have other documents that are contrary to it?
 
G

Gordon Etly

RedGrittyBrick said:
That definition in full:
"perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language"

The //official documentation// says 'never write "PERL"'

It does not explicitly, I never claimed otherwise. It does write it
implicitly, as "Practical Extraction and Report Language", which can be
condensed into "PERL".
 
T

Tad J McClellan

Gordon Etly said:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It does not explicitly,


Yes it does.

The docs snippet that says those exact words has already
been posted in this thread.
 
R

Randal L. Schwartz

Gordon> Then the "difference" and the previous mentioned FAQ should be
Gordon> mentioned, because the main document gives "Practical Extraction and
Gordon> Report Language", which can be condensed to just "PERL". It's in the
Gordon> main document so why have other documents that are contrary to it?

"man cat" =>

NAME
cat - concatenate and print files

Does that mean I should say that "cat" is really "CAPF"?

By that logic, there ya go.
 
G

Gordon Etly

Randal said:
Gordon> Then the "difference" and the previous mentioned FAQ should be
Gordon> amended, because the main document gives "Practical
Extraction and Report Language", which can be condensed to
just "PERL". It's in the Gordon> main document so why have other
documents that are contrary to it?

"man cat" =>

NAME
cat - concatenate and print files

Does that mean I should say that "cat" is really "CAPF"?

By that logic, there ya go.

With all due respect, your logic is flawed (which I admit is rare.)

"concatenate and print files" is not written the same way as "Practical
Extraction and Report Language"... 1) the former is all lowercase, the
latter has capitalized letters, which yield PERL when put together. The
NAME line for 'man perl' (or 'perldoc perl') clearly defines PERL in
expanded form. The man for 'cat' does not.

I mean, would it be a stretch to say, "I just wrote a Practical
Extraction and Report Language program!" ? If that is valid, then why
wouldn't, "I just wrote a PERL program!" ? Yes, it would be more correct
to write "Perl" instead, but it should not be //wrong// to write "PERL"
(as an acronym for the definition given by Perl's own documentation.)
 
A

Andrew DeFaria

Randal said:
Gordon> Then the "difference" and the previous mentioned FAQ should be
Gordon> mentioned, because the main document gives "Practical
Extraction and
Gordon> Report Language", which can be condensed to just "PERL". It's
in the
Gordon> main document so why have other documents that are contrary to it?

"man cat" =>

NAME
cat - concatenate and print files

Does that mean I should say that "cat" is really "CAPF"?

By that logic, there ya go.
Not at all. The logic, Randall, is that an acronym is spelled out into
words by capitalizing the first letter of important words. You know
that. They taught you that in elementary school fer crying out loud! So
it's clear when it says "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language"
there is a specific reason why the P-E-R and L were intentionally
capitalized and the "a" in and was specifically and also intentionally
not capitalized. What was meant was clearly "I'm capitalizing the P-E-R
and L because I want it to reflect that those are the same characters as
are in the acronym PERL and I am specifically not capitalizing the 'a'
in and precisely because it's not letter in PERL". Your example above
of "concatenate and print files" has 0, zip, nada, capital letters at
all and they doesn't apply at all!

Stated differently, if you considered PERL to be an acronym, wouldn't
you naturally write "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language"?!?

And don't play dumb like you don't know this.
 
J

John W. Krahn

Gordon said:
With all due respect, your logic is flawed (which I admit is rare.)

"concatenate and print files" is not written the same way as "Practical
Extraction and Report Language"... 1) the former is all lowercase, the
latter has capitalized letters, which yield PERL when put together. The
NAME line for 'man perl' (or 'perldoc perl') clearly defines PERL in
expanded form. The man for 'cat' does not.

I mean, would it be a stretch to say, "I just wrote a Practical
Extraction and Report Language program!" ? If that is valid, then why
wouldn't, "I just wrote a PERL program!" ? Yes, it would be more correct
to write "Perl" instead, but it should not be //wrong// to write "PERL"
(as an acronym for the definition given by Perl's own documentation.)

man grep

GREP(1)

NAME
grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - print lines matching a pattern


But grep is short for "Global Regular Expression Print" so why doesn't
it say:

NAME
grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - Global Regular Expression Print


Instead?



John
 
A

Andrew DeFaria

Sherman said:
... endlessly ...

Will you give it a bloody rest already? Larry Wall invented the
language, and he says it's not called PERL. His language, his call.
Deal with it.

sherm--
Something I can never understand - if you really don't care to read such
stuff, if it is tiring on you and if you wish it would stop, please tell
me - Why do you continue to read!!!!!

I mean man, what? Can't you simply skip this thread?
 
G

Gordon Etly

John said:
man grep

GREP(1)

NAME
grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - print lines matching a pattern

So what?
But grep is short for "Global Regular Expression Print" so why doesn't
it say:

NAME
grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - Global Regular Expression Print


Instead?

Because every NAME line is different. Perl's happens to describe a
meaning for PERL.
 
G

Gordon Etly

Sherman said:
... endlessly ...

Will you give it a bloody rest already? Larry Wall invented the
language, and he says it's not called PERL. His language, his call.

Wrong, Larry himeself described it the same way 'perldoc perl' does.
Deal with it.

You're telling the wrong side.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,744
Messages
2,569,479
Members
44,899
Latest member
RodneyMcAu

Latest Threads

Top