My interests are, as near as I can tell, rather widely varied. You are probably first interested in my reason for beginning to learn Perl.

My job, which I enjoy, has a large component of finding important information from log files, which is much easier if specific types of things can be easily summarized from them. Currently for some of these things I end up with long bash pipes with awk in them (sometimes multiple times) and with loops too. I do very much like writing these things, but also am always looking for ways to make them better.

From what I hear, it sounds likely that I can make a lot of these shorter and easier by using Perl instead for large parts of it. I'll probably start out with short one-liner type things, but (especially since I already tend to stretch the definition of what goes in "one line" with my bash/awk pipes) I will probably end up with more complex things over time (since with easier-to-use tools, more complicated things will be easier). I look forward to this process!

I also like learning things, and explaining things. I am often a bit on the wordy side (as you can probably tell already) but occasionally this ends up being seen as helpful. I look forward to when I know enough that I can help others with the fun of learning too. :-)