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Subject:RESEND: Programming Languages, part 2 From:Richard Mateosian <srm -at- CYBERPASS -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:04:08 -0800
This is the second of the two reviews mentioned in part one:
Programming Perl, 2nd ed., Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and
Randal L. Schwartz (O'Reilly, Sebastopol, Calif., 1996, 670 pp.,
ISBN 1-56592-149-6, (800) 998-9938; $39.95)
Larry Wall wrote the rn news reader, the Unix patch program,
and the warp space-war game. He created Perl and continues to
guide its evolution.
Perl is a freely available programming language. It started as a
generalization of the Unix tools sed, grep, and awk. It has
become the language of choice for the CGI scripts that run on
Web servers. You can download source code (in C) for the Perl
interpreter from the Perl website:
Most Perl users calls this book the camel book, because, like
the widely read first edition, it has a picture of a dromedary on
its cover.
The book is the reference book for Perl 5, the latest version.
Perl was always extremely flexible and easy to use. It has
become enormously capable as well. This is the definitive
reference. Not surprisingly, it is long and detailed. The most
interesting part, however, is the overview. It shows how Wall's
views on language design shape the language.
Wall is a linguist, and he set a design goal for Perl that
matches the way natural languages work: make easy jobs easy
without making hard jobs impossible. The result seems strange
at first, but it doesn't take long to get the idea.
Perl programs are often only a line or two long and can be
extremely easy to read and understand. Unlike other languages
that demand precision and unambiguity, Perl tries to understand
you. I wouldn't want to program life support systems with that
philosophy, but it's terrific for the text manipulation tasks Wall
designed it for. I like Perl a lot.
If you design Web sites, or if you just want to manipulate your
email in ways your mail program doesn't provide, try Perl. If you
find yourself getting hooked, buy this book.
********************************************************************
Good luck. ...RM
Richard Mateosian <srm -at- cyberpass -dot- net>
Review Editor, IEEE Micro Berkeley, CA
