Minor amendments -- don't turn off the cow-orkers who might have other preconceptions:
  1. Because it's often usually installed by default on nix-ish boxen.
  2. Because it's readily available on every platform (at least, those I've run into) virtually every significant platform newer than CP/M 86.
  3. There are a lot of existing modules to tap into
  4. There is a lot of expertise to draw upon (Perlmonks,some .edu tuts, other sites).
  5. You don't need to do much to move Start moving from 'shell script' to 'perl script'...
  6. It's really good for the types of task that you tend to do a lot of, when doing 'systems programming'. Running commands, capturing and parsing output.
  7. ... But despite that it's a powerful enough language that you can go a lot further with ease. (OO programming, multithreading, to name a few.)
  8. I get along with it better than the other languages I've worked with.

Or, to put it another way, it offers a good way to do almost anything other than washing windows and putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

:-)
If I've misconstrued your question or the logic needed to answer it, I offer my apologies to all those electrons which were inconvenienced by the creation of this post.

In reply to Re: Why Perl? by ww
in thread Why Perl? by Preceptor

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