I'm curious to know, how were you lured into this honeypot called Perl?

Speaking for myself, I encountered a systems integration problem. A major Telephone PBX manufacturer had made it difficult for call accounting systems (other than their own) to collect call data from their switch. After the telephone vendor and call accounting manufacturer both threw up their hands after weeks of unsuccessful attempts at integrating the two systems, I found a Perl program on the web that made the call data collection connection we hadn't been able to achieve using our usual hardware and methods.

The guy who wrote the program was kind enough to provide the well annotated script which I heavily modified to meet my specific requirements.

That program now runs (as a service) on the accounting server and has been reliably collecting data ever since. Now I look at integration problems with an entirely new perspective because so many of such problems can be addressed by Perl.

I'd be interested in others' initiation into the use of Perl and what other real world problems apart from impressing women, quantifying head lice infestations or weatherizing an HP Printer you've used Perl to solve.

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generator


In reply to What was the bait (project, problem or opportunity) that hooked you on Perl? by generator

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