Hi

I'm planning to learn a scripting language for automation. Perl has been a default choice in this scenario, but with other languages coming up, how's Perl doing? I wanna automate some stuff in my current job,start with simple automation, then may be move on to excel reports with graphs (The management here is big time into it. They just like everything "graphisized" :). I'll then use that experience to sort of "break" into automation focused jobs. So how's Perl demand in automation?

I know this is like walking into a Harley Davidson showroom and asking folks which is a better thing, a cruiser or a sports bike (or vice versa)? But hope you guys would be able to give me some clarity.

Another reason for asking here, is, there's a lot of articles on the net that seem to indicate that Perl is on it's way out....and then there's an article about Perl 7 (and many more on Perl 6).

Which brings me to the next question. I'm planning to start with Perl 5, and then may be move to Perl 6. Perl 5 seems to be default installed on the linux servers here, and then there's some Windows friendly version installed on some other servers.

That's one too many questions, but hope you folks would clear it up for me.

In reply to How is Perl for automation? by fidodido

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.