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by Woeps 1091 days ago
Perl better? maybe or maybe not.

It can be very useful and they are pretty robust. I often found Perl scripts running for years and years without issues at different companies.

My main issue with Perl-scripts is that they often are not "readable" by anybody but the original creator. Which of course left the company. (not a fault of Perl itself tough)

But your millage may vary and any script can be made (un)readable.

2 comments

I've always found it weird that people bash on Perl relentlessly for being hard to read and then turn around and praise Rust's syntax when it is full of stuff like this:

    fn print_d(t: &'static impl Display) {
>> My main issue with Perl-scripts is that they often are not "readable" by anybody but the original creator.

Anyone writing Perl scripts like this should not be trusted with any programming language.

Perl scripts are no less readable than bash scripts or Awk scripts. This is because so much of Perl was written to do the same work as bash, awk, sed, and the other related Unix text processing command line programs, but all under one roof.

Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself:

https://learn.perl.org/

http://blob.perl.org/books/impatient-perl/iperl.htm

Perl can also be hilariously unreadable: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0017.html
>> Perl can also be hilariously unreadable: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0017.html

Most programming languages can be obfuscated. That does not mean people write code in those programming languages like that:

C: https://www.ioccc.org/

Javascript: view-source:https://www.google.com/

The truth is that insulting Perl is considered stylish by some, so many people do despite knowing little to nothing about Perl and having never used it.

However, if you want Perl to be hilariously unreadable, why not write it in Latin:

https://metacpan.org/dist/Lingua-Romana-Perligata/view/lib/L...

Or Klingon:

https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun