I personally haven't done any CGI scripting just yet. I probably will at some point in the not-too-distant future, but just now that's not useful to me. I mostly use it to parse log files and either take some action based on that or just report them nicely. Perl is great, not just because of its text-handling abilities, but also for its breadth of potential responses, much of which comes from the massive module library. General scripting is also nice, such as when I need to automate a repetitive but fairly complex task (eg large batch jobs), it's great. I'm new to Perl from regular shell scripting (Bourne and Korn) and C, and what immediately stands out to me is the module library (compared to shell scripts) and the community, such as Perl Monks and a few other places around the net.

That said, yes, I think Perl Monks is weighted a bit towards CGI programming, though certainly not exclusively so. For that reason, one of my favorite areas on the site is CUFP, precisely because I like to see what else can be done with the language -- and come to think of it, that area is a good example of how the site isn't too CGI-centric.

In reply to Re: Are we obsessed with CGI? by elvolio
in thread Are we obsessed with CGI? by rinceWind

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.