Re: Unix and Perl

Once upon a time it was essential. But since the ActiveState distribution for Windows was merged into the main distribution - I sometimes forget where I am! It is entirely possible to become fluent in Perl now with no Unix knowledge at all.

Unix'y knowledge, however, is useful in its own right! Especailly as so many Perl jobs will require some contact with Unix and web servers.

jdtoronto

Comment on Re: Unix and Perl

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Re^2: Unix and Perl by Fletch (Bishop) on May 30, 2006 at 20:32 UTC
Then again by becoming fluent in Perl you to some degree pick up NIX knowledge. Or at least you get some exposure to it. Perl internalizes a good bit of "The NIX Way" to do things (e.g. file and directory handling, large bits of the POSIX API, the socket API) and by learning to use Perl you're going to look at problems through the prism of that philosophy (pardon me while I run my metaphor through this wood chipper over here a couple more times . . .). Granted while lots of Wintendo specific things don't exactly fit into the same conceptual framework (driving stuff through OLE, for instance) or work as well (processes and `fork()` versus a thread based model) the underlying basics translate fairly well.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Unix and Perl by jdporter (Paladin) on May 30, 2006 at 21:30 UTC
It is entirely possible to become fluent in Perl now with no Unix knowledge at all. It was possible before, too. Perl is a 99.9% stand-alone language, unlike the bag of shells and various other tools it replaces en masse. Theoretically, one could program in Perl without knowing anything about *X other than how to log in and launch an editor. We're building the house of the future together.	[reply]


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