Re: Perl Programming within Debian

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:49:08 -0500
"Leonid Grinberg" <lgrinberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

OK, several things:

Perl does NOT encourage bad behavior. It simply makes it easier to code poorly.
Perl is not as difficult to learn as people say it is.

The best place to start would be Google. That is how I learned it. The
package ``perl'' will have the interpreter. The package perl-doc will
have the command ``perldoc'' (yes, the package has a dash - the
program does not). perldoc has lots of nice documentation. I suggest
getting ``Learning Perl'' and ``The Perl Cookbook'' if you can. Also,
sign up for the mailing list beginners@xxxxxxxx where many nice people
will help you use the language.


I just looked on http://lists.cpan.org/ and there were 266 mailing lists related to Perl. This shows how popular it is but can also be off-putting for a newcomer to the language. Which list to choose? Several are for beginners.

I purchased the O'Reilly book Learning Perl and it is the only O'Reilly book I have ever regretted buying. The examples are contrived and confusing; the authors seem more concerned with being humorous then with being educational.

OTOH the O'Reilly book Learning Python was clear, concise and informative which is one reason why I now use Python (still learning)

Any extension works, but .pl is conventional for command line.
Sometimes, people give it no extension at all. For web servers, either
.cgi or .pl are usually used.

Good luck! Feel free to email me if you have any questions!



At the end of the day it's whatever you feel most comfortable with.
--
John K Masters - User #417400 in the Linux Counter http://counter.li.org/

No trees were killed in the creation of this message.
However, many electrons were terribly inconvenienced.


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