For me the more interesting question is, why people consider ksh (or bash) more readable than Perl?

For the same reason people consider MUMPS, FORTRAN or COBOL more readable: They are used to it, but not to "the new thing" (Perl or anything else). See also Re: Rosetta PGA-TRAM, Re: Argument for Perl ( again and again ), Re^3: List EXE_FILES installed by CPAN for some MUMPS war stories.

Alexander

That's only half the answer.

Why are they used to ksh? :)

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

Why are they used to ksh? :)

Because at some point in time, it seemed to be the only usable tool?

Quoting the sig of roboticus: When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

I vaguely remember one of my profs claiming that ksh was the only portable shell, because it was standardised. Well, we continued to write bash and perl scripts.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

AIX background. KSH is the de-facto shell. You have to install ksh93 or bash to get something more modern (to use arrays and such).