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This article seems to be remarkably short on criticism of perl. — Ashley Y 00:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh goodness me, be careful with that box if you're going to open it. (Why? Have a read through the archives to see the approach you shouldn't take.) — Hex (❝?!❞) 00:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that that Perl receives a lot of criticism for it's 'philosophy'. I think that this shouldn't be part of a programming language's article, but instead in an article related to the particular 'philosophy'. Maybe it's sometimes better to call them paradigms. For example Object-oriented programming has criticism. Then there are design decisions, like a big core library. I don't really see how the amount of stuff one ships can really become criticism. It would be better to add this fact to the article at let the reader decide whether it is a good thing or not. Another topic is readability. Perl obfuscation is very popular, but this doesn't mean it's impossible or harder to write readable (well, that's very subjective anyway) code than it is in any comparable language. I think the default implementation of objects should is outdated for a scripting language. One could compare this to Lua (programming language), but there is Moose and with Devel::Declare it doesn't look to different from very object oriented languages, like Ruby for example. I think all this criticism should therefor be mentioned as facts inside there rest of the article. Some people prefer one way, while others prefer it the other. I think this would also be the only way to comply with Wikipedia's principle of neutrality. If we just add facts information also won't be deleted, because someone with a different opinion. -- Athaba ( talk) 18:43, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Perl drawbacks are mentioned, but some of perls most important qualities are overlooked; for example - programmer errors (aka "Code Quality") and the high-level nature of perl make perl implementations more robust and considerably faster to reach a market and maintain afterwards.
It's unfair to discuss "performance" and consider only the speed that code runs - ignoring the speed it took programmers to write that code, the correctness of the code itself, and the time it's going to take more programmers in future to maintain it. Given modern CPU speeds and the pace of internet business (not to mention the lack of real problems actually needing rapid low-level CPU-intensive solutions), development performance is overwhelmingly more important anyhow. 203.45.103.88 ( talk) 09:42, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
This isn't a tutorial. It shouldn't read like one. The syntax section does not need examples. This needs heavily whittled down, it's a whole article in itself. Chris Cunningham 16:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we should move the history section back down to the end of the article. It may be logical to begin any subject by reciting its history, that's not usually the first thing that people consulting an encyclopedia want to see. People reading the Perl article in WikiPedia want a basic overview and introduction, and that's what the Overview section is for. Swmcd 15:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Generally, there is one main version of a software program. It is the one with the highest version number, the "latest and greatest". Any version below that is not being actively maintained. Perl is differnt, in that, if someone looks at the ActiveState website, they will see both a 5.8 version and a 5.6 version. Perhaps we should add a paragraph or two describing how and why there are two versions of perl5 being maintained and updated. TakingUpSpace 01:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
"sigils...which identifies the data type being accessed (not the type of the variable itself)"
It seems sigils do identify variable type, whether it be array, hash or scalar variable, while the data type is based on context. If you call an array variable with a $ instead of a @, its not going read in scalar context and return the amount of elements, it just going to be empty, or give an error if using strict.-- 71.229.77.97 02:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
$ perl -we 'my @foo=(1,2,3); print "$foo\n"' Name "main::foo" used only once: possible typo at -e line 1. Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at -e line 1.
-- H3xx 16:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
my %hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2); print "%hash";
will produce "%foo"; the hash isn't interpolated. There IS, however, a way to interpolate a hash using a slice:
my %hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2); print "@hash{keys %hash}"; # -- OR -- print "@hash{qw/a b/}";
will produce "1 2". Does anyone think it should be changed to read "sigils allow some variables to be interpolated" or "sigils allow scalar and array variables to be interpolated"? -- H3xx 16:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
In perl6, sigils refer to the data structure and not the data itself. For example, if you get something out of an array, in perl5 it would be prefixed by a $ (scalar) but in perl6 this is no longer the case. It would be prefixed by a @ in this case. I don't like it either. Laurensvh 00:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
There is a bit of confusion above, mixed in with some accurate statements. An extended example might help: Given the following scalar, array, hash and reference variables:
use strict;
my $one = 1;
my $sref = \$one; # scalar reference
my @digits = (1..9);
my $aref = \@digits; # array reference
my %cardinals = (one=>1, two=>2,three=>3);
my $href = \%cardinals; # hash reference
my $fsref = sub {return $sref;}; # sub reference; invoked sub returns scalar ref
my $faref = sub {return $aref;}; # sub reference; invoked sub returns array ref
the following things all interpolate (note that they all start with $ or @):
print "$one\n"; # scalar var
print "$$sref\n"; # dereferenced scalar reference
print "${&$fsref}\n"; # dereferenced sub invocation, returning scalar ref
print "@digits\n"; # array var
print "$digits[5]\n"; # array element
print "$aref->[4]\n"; # array element, via array reference
print "@digits[4..6]\n"; # array slice
print "@$aref\n"; # dereferenced array reference
print "@{&$faref}\n"; # dereferenced sub invocation, returning array ref
print "$cardinals{one}\n"; # hash element
print "@cardinals{'two','three'}\n";
# hash slice
print "@cardinals{sort keys %cardinals}\n";
# all values in alphabetical order by respective key
With anything that interpolates as a list the final format of the string that renders the list is affected by the $" ($LIST_SEPARATOR) special variable; this defines the glue character(s) interposed between each element of the list:
local $" = ', ';
print "@digits\n";
print "@digits[4..6]\n";
local $" = '; ';
print "@$aref\n";
print "@cardinals{'one','two'}\n";
Nothing that starts with any other character interpolates:
print %cardinals,"\n"; # hash 'unwound'
print "%cardinals\n"; # just a literal
print "{&$faref}->[3]\n"; # $faref (CODE ref.) interpolated as string
print *one,"\n"; # typeglob, recognised
print ${*one},"\n"; # not quite sure what this is, but not an error
print "*one\n"; # typeglob not interpolated
print "&$faref->[3]\n"; # run-time error as $faref not array ref
I wrote a short tutorial on using Perl DBI at Wikibooks: b:Perl Programming/DBI - Perl Database Inteface.
Currently it only has one example for Oracle. That's the only DBMS with which i had personal experience.
It would be great if someone could add a section about connection to a free database, such as MySQL.
Thanks in advance. -- Amir E. Aharoni 11:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Again there seems to be a bit of confusion interspersed with true statements...more to come shortly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.101.255.40 ( talk) 12:30, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Scalar variables, array variables, hash variables and reference variables can be either lexically scoped (declared with my
) or package scoped (declared with our
). If declared with my
, they don't exist in a
namespace as such.; if the same name, eg $x
, is used in differently lexical scopes, they are differentiated by the compiler. If package scoped they exist in a namespace; internally package-scoped variables $a
and @a
in a package are connected by the typeglob a, which can be accessed (this is seldom required) as *a
. Other named but sigil-less things (filehandles, directory handles, formats, subroutine) names are all package scoped, and also 'belong' to a typeglob; they are differentiated by the context (which is occasionally ambiguous); conventions also help: handles and formats should be all UPPER CASE, and maybe subs should have a leading cap. In any case, as regards variables, from the programmer's point of view, whether lexically or package scoped, the variables $a
, @a
and %a
are all independent of each other (unless of course you make an explicit connection, eg $a = \@a
).
Ivanberti ( talk) 13:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
my
' in the above paragraph, as the standard texts apply the term 'dynamic' to package variables. Actually there's still a bit of a problem with terminology here: our
declarations are also lexical, in that the corresponding variable is only visible in the lexical scope(s) in which they are declared.Ivanberti ( talk) 07:34, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
My reading of "Fun with Perl" was this: it was mostly about the community. Thus, I've re-written it as such, and added a number of details and references. I've also removed some examples that I dont' think actually helped any.
Please, let me know what you think. I'd really like to see the whole thing expanded on the community front to detail some of the growth of the community and the phases of involvement from Larry's daughter / Perl annoucement in 1987 on Usenet all the way up to the RFC process for Perl 6. - Harmil 23:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
16:38, 2007 February 28 Aristotle Pagaltzis (Talk | contribs) (→History - [...] enhancements aren’t necessarily minor)
Can we list the enhancements that aren't minor?
Swmcd 16:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
From the article:"All variables are marked by a leading sigil, which identifies the data type being accessed (not the type of the variable itself)"
I don't think the differnece between the data type being accessed and the type of the variable itself is clear. ori 18:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
i, the maintainer of the german perl article, have plans in mind to replace this article complete with a translation of my work because i think is much better structured and its more readable, but i dont want only destray your work. i think it would help if someone would agree here or help, since me english could heve some lesser flaws. no fear it wount happen next week. (but better i prepare you now huahahaha..) Lichtkind 20:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
On the de.wikipedia.org, I've been looking over the Perl article to see what improvements might be available. I don't read German, but being a native English speaker and this being a technical article about a primarily English-language subject, enough of the words and sentence structure is similar that I can get a sense of the article. Here are some things I noticed:
Overall, I'm not sure that I see that there's a huge value in adopting the German version, even given significant translation effort. I do think that there are useful lessons to be learned, and I'd invite anyone who speaks both languages to peruse both articles and merge improvements in either direction. - Harmil 23:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I feel the best thing to do would be for Lichtkind to create a subpage here and place his/her translated article into it for the community to take a look at and discuss, rather than going so far as to replace the actual article. — Hex (❝?!❞) 23:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Common to replace was only my first intend 1,5 years ago. i think best starting point is the intro. as the first contact with the reader it should provide a quick overview over most important aspects of perl. To improve that is the fastest and most visible way to improve the article. therefore i will translate first our version of it and we could change it that it will fit into this text. This first column requires always the highest standarts in info density and understandability, for people who dont want read the whole text or foreign to that subject. because this high standart it also stresses more the different views about how to write the article or different horizont of knowledge and we could get faster in sync, what would easy the work for the rest of article. hough. Lichtkind 11:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
So whe no more comments coming i will start this, i also started an review proces to better the style of the german. we have some very strict rules here what belongs where, which i mostly agree with. so maybe this article can profit from this action too. cu. Lichtkind 12:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
The section on types is misleading, FOO
in print FOO "bar"
is not a file handle but a bareword that happens to resolve to a handle, it's actually short for print {*{__PACKAGE__ . "::FOO"}{IO}} "bar"
. Just like:
@a = 1 .. 2; push a, 3; #
Is actually short for:
@a = 1 .. 2; push @{*{"main::a"}{ARRAY}}, 3;
Actually on the whole I feel that the explanation of Perl's data types would be much better if it started by explaining globs somewhat like Advanced Perl Programming's Introspection chapter does. It would then explain how package variables map to globs and later lexical variables (lexicals are really just scoped pseudo-globs) and magic types.
Anyway I was too lazy to change this myself, feel free to ignore this:)
- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I dispute all of the latest changes made by user:Aristotle Pagaltzis in there entirety. Cpan is more aptly described as an "online repository", than an FTP archive, largely because FTP has little to do with CPAN, and because Repository is already a wiki article to which CPAN is an example of.
In other news "created and improved upon by its 5,000 plus authors" is fundamentally different than "by over 5,000 authors," which is even deceptive. No conclusive data says CPAN has 5000 authors, only that Perl-pause has 5000+ members (to which every CPAN author must be.) This is a fallacy of equivocation, because all CPAN authors are Pause members, does not mean all Pause members are CPAN authors. I might revert the change. -- EvanCarroll 09:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Also, the article seems quite inconsistent with regard to CPAN - is it a proper noun ("CPAN") or not ("The CPAN"). I vote the former. LeoNerd ( talk) 20:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the reference to Perl being ' post-modern'. The post-modern page makes no reference to computers or programming. I don't see what benefit there is in calling Perl post-modern. If we call Perl post-modern, then so should virtually all languages since 1990. Is there any reference to Perl being called post-modern in any other text? peterl 19:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
(
help), from a talk at Linux World. Also on Larry Wall's Web site at
http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.htmlThis article received its Good Article rating on 14 December 2005 from an editor who hearkened back to a kinder, gentler era when it was not outside of norms to just simply plonk down a Good Article tag for no other reason than WP:ILIKEIT. Alas, the standards for retaining this pretty green trinket have tightened over the year; in the present regime, someone unassociated with writing this article (a reviewer) should examine the article with respect to the good article criteria and, on the various standards cited, expresses up, down, or neutral sentiments, plus an aggregate sentiment, upon which retaining the pretty little trinket relies. By posting this remark here, I'm not suggesting that the article has gone bad or presently fails the criteria, but I am noting the absence of a review that is a hallmark of the present process, and, in the fullness of time, a review should be performed on this article. With the absence of a review, this article is a delisting candidate. Note that, for an editor to delist this article, the due-diligence of a good article review is required so that specific reasons for delisting can be given by the dislisting editor; or, for that matter, offering cogent reasons why the Good Article mark should remain. Anything short of a fair review is unfair to editors who contribute to this article regularly and in good faith. Drop any questions about this on my talk page. Take care — Gosgood 13:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
In the interests of expanding the lead section I propose to add a third paragraph such as:
If no objection is raised, I propose adding this as the third paragraph of the lead. -- Ancheta Wis ( talk) 03:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I have edited the lead section and expanded it. If anyone finds any errors, please correct. Shekure ( talk) 12:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
I was only able to understand the first three words of this Wikipedia article. Could someone add a sentence that explains what Perl is/does that non professional computer users can understand? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drstk ( talk • contribs) 12:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The syntax highlighting in the examples is using some kind of incredibly poor parser that doesn't understand basic Perl syntax, causing it to be misleading: for example, when illustrating $#, it formats everything after the # as a comment!
If whatever's being used here can't be fixed, I think the highlighting should be removed, because it is making the code harder to read, not easier. (Posting a comment rather than being bold and doing it myself because I'd probably just be taken for a vandal and reverted immediately if I did that...) 78.105.167.145 ( talk) 22:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
$album = q(It's David Bowie's "Heroes");
I have applied semi-protection to this article for a period expiring on November 5, 2008. This is because point of view editorializing is being repeatedly inserted into the article by anonymous users, following my temporary blocking of User:Getly for doing the same and violating the three-revert rule. The users are all appearing within the 12.72.157.* range and I do not want to apply a range block that may inconvenience innocent users. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
in the beginning section there is:
"Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA, in 1987"
after the content:
"Larry Wall began work on Perl in 1987, while working as a programmer at Unisys,[6] and released version 1.0 to the comp.sources.misc newsgroup on December 18, 1987."
If you read just the first one you will get impression that the Perl was "born" in NASA but that's not truth, or?
Jozef.kutej ( talk) 13:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
On the subject of Perl parsing, I've published (in the Perl Review) a three part series containing rigorous proofs of Adam Kennedy's conjecture. Parts of the paragraph on this topic are wrong or misleading. The Perl Review articles are now available online.
I'm going make appropriate changes. I'm aware of WP:COS, and will try to stay within its confines.
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 18:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
the infobox says perl was influenced by c++. Is there a reference for this? Curtis Newton ( talk) 19:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Ambiguous pronouns can be acceptable: for example, in
The dog sniffed the plant, until it noticed a cat.
the reader can be expected to figure out that, of the two possible referents for "it", it was the dog that noticed the cat, not the plant. The reader does this using his semantic knowledge.
The discussion describing Perl run/compile phase vs. time contains difficult material about a counter-intuitive, unusual and often misunderstood and mistated aspect of Perl. The reader cannot be relied on to find ambiguous pronoun referents quickly and easily using semantic knowledge. Pronoun referents have to be completely unambiguous. Where that's not practical, we have to reword the sentence to eliminate the pronoun.
My original was
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but can also be in compile time during the run phase.
Here the two coordinated predicates must have the same subject, so there is no ambiguity. However, the reader is required to see that the "but" coordinates two predicates, and that perhaps might be difficult.
Another editor's intermediate revision was
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but it can also be in compile time during the run phase.
The "it" can refer to any of three things, with "Perl" and "the compile phase" being the most likely. Semantic knowledge will tell you that "Perl" must be the referent, but we can't safely assume that a reader can easily and accurately supply that degree of semantic knowledge.
My compromise is
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but Perl can also be in compile time during the run phase.
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 18:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was not moved. Closed per WP:SNOW. 199.125.109.88 ( talk) 18:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Perl → Perl (programming language) — Note that the target name is already a redirect to this article. And after that, i think that Perl (disambiguation) should be moved/renamed to "Perl". A bot would have to be set up to update the thousands of links to this article. -- Jerome Potts ( talk) 08:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
The article says in History: On December 18, 2007, [...] Perl 5.10.0 was released. [...] In December 2008, Perl 5.8.9 was released.. Do I understand that there was a backward-numbering, 5.10.0 --> 5.8.9? Was the earlier version depreciated? - DePiep ( talk) 07:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
The section on Community now has a new entry about an aggregation site at http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/ . It makes the bold statement that "This is the main source of news for modern Perl". I hadn't heard of it before - can anyone apart from the original author support that statement? 'The main source' seems quite strong. I'm tempted to remove it, but wanted to get some other's feedback first. Thanks. peterl ( talk) 03:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Anticipating the deletion of the IRC section I will add that the IRC channels mentioned can be found in a book "The Definitive Guide to Catalyst" and some other books as well. Stefan.petrea ( talk) 00:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
The old history section was just awful - it jumped from 1994 to 2007 to 2009. A whole lot of Perl happened in between. I took what I could from the perldelta's, as well as the perlhist docs on perldoc.perl.org, and tried to summarize it as best I could. If there's anything I missed or if I'm incorrect anywhere, feel free to fix it. -- Pepkaro ( talk) 09:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I have deleted the part of the article that says it's a glue language and it's good for sysadmins. This is not true and there are plenty of examples in this direction. A lot of people doing science use Perl for their work in bioinformatics and some other places as well. It's not a glue language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stefan.petrea ( talk • contribs) 08:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
The following section was removed from the article
Boolean data type:
begin removed text
In the
Perl programming language, there is no distinction between numbers, strings, and other non-aggregate data types. (They are all called "scalar".) Aggregate types without any elements, empty strings, numbers which equal a value of 0, the strings ""
and "0"
, and undefined variables evaluate to "false" when used in a Boolean context. All other values (including strings such as 0.0
and 0E0
which are "zero but true") evaluate to "true".
Elements of aggregates may also be tested against "existence" or "non-existence"
[2], and all variables may be evaluated as either "defined" or "undefined".
[3] (An element of a hash or array that has been assigned the value undef
exists but is undefined.) In Perl this distinction is important when evaluating scalars in a Boolean manner to prevent "false falses" where one of the above values should be considered "true".
There are no built-in true or false constants in Perl 5, however the values do exist internally in Perl6.
1
is traditionally used for true, and constructs such as ... while 1
are special-cased to avoid advisory warnings. Internally, recent versions of Perl 5 have a variety of predefined "yes" and "no" values, so the recommended way to provide a false value has recently shifted from undef
to !1
.
end removed text
Is there a place for this text in the Perl-related articles? Perhaps in the Wikibook? Thanks, and all the best, --
Jorge Stolfi (
talk)
23:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
ThePilgrim ( talk) 15:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC) The preamble on this section mentions hashes, the table has Associative array. one or other needs to be used consistently throughout the entry.
Shouldn't
The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal).[32]
which is found in the second paragraph of the Overview section say something like
According to the man page, "[t]he language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal)."
possibly citing that and including a link to an online manual page? But, as is, it looks like it might be original writing or paraphrase when it's a quote. -- 74.162.148.157 ( talk) 20:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to bring this article back to GA material. One of the comments on the 2009 reassessment was that "The Language structure section contains far too much detail and is written like a programming manual". I think the section should be split into Perl language structure, or possibly Perl syntax and semantics to follow the Python model. The section here could then be condensed into a more theoretical description of functional and object-oriented styles, and the use of regular expressions. (I'm taking the lead here again from the corresponding Python section, which has a very good summary of the language.) Feezo (Talk) 07:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
When I Google for "perl pastimes", out of the first 10 results, 5 are this article, 3 are a book by Adam Perl about non-Perl pastimes, one is a list of books and categories on Amazon.com, and a single result is "Programming Pastimes" which includes code in Perl (and I suspect that "pastimes" is being used generically, not to refer to some specific aspect of programming/Perl culture). The book, according to Amazon, contains 3 instances of "pastime", none of which refer to a specific cultural phenomenon. So in the absence of any evidence whatsoever I'm deleting the claim that "Perl's pastimes have become a defining element of the Perl community.". -- holizz ( talk) 17:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
local
and You Can't Get There From Here. If you have any more comments on this article, I'd love to hear them.
Feezo
(Talk)
20:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Do my eyes deceive me? Did someone actually write, "Things that are different should look different" in reference to Perl??
Ha ha, that's a good one. I think that was a joke. Or, if not, then see if you can tell what this prints (without running it):
for ($x=0; $x<10; $x++) {
$x[$x] = $x+1;
$x{$x[$x]} = $x;
}
print $x{5};
NCdave (
talk)
10:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The IRC section really could be better. Right now it's just a table of networks and channels, and doesn't explain further. Problem is, I very much doubt we can find reliable sources for even a third of them. We might have to pull that whole section, or just shorten it into a ref to http://www.irc.perl.org, unless someone has other ideas? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 11:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I was surprised to see Perl omitted from a list of open source software. It goes without saying that you have to understand Perl, etc. to even read its source code, but why is open source mentioned only tangentially in the article? If this is an unimportant detail for the article, it still would be pertinent to the Open source article. If you reply on this page, then I can edit the open source page appropriately. -- Ancheta Wis ( talk) 11:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Jcrypto, I've removed your Examples section from the main article. I think it has some good content, but almost all of that information already exists on the Perl language structure page. That page was broken out a few months ago because it just cluttered up the article. Almost all programming language articles on Wikipedia (at least, those of fairly notable languages like C or Python) only have very minor amounts of code or examples in them, relegating the specifics to a separate article. Some places where I think your suggestions could be added to the Perl language structure articles:
But generally, remember that Wikipedia is not a reference manual. We don't need to go into complete details about how every little feature works. Code examples to illustrate points are good, but code by itself with little narrative is just cluttered.
IMHO, ofcourse. :)
Pepkaro ( talk) 17:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
I have tried--twice--to assert that PERL is declining in popularity as a CGI language. The edits were reverted twice. I am now reinstating the statement again, and I am writing to exhort the anonymous editor NOT to behave again as he did. Namely:
This is an encyclopedia, not a football forum. If you don't like PERL is not popular anymore for a certain application, I'm sorry, but don't try to mislead the public with insulting edit summaries, unjustified reverts and misleading sourcing. Thanks. Complainer ( talk) 11:24, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Isn't the fact , that perl is interpreted ,just an implementation detail? There exist (or can exist) other implementations of the language ,which can translate it to JVM bytecode or CIL etc. Perl 6 has a language specification,so it's possible theoretically to create a perl implementation , which is compiled.(or not interpreted) 78.90.139.102 ( talk) 17:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
Will Coleda recently deleted the part of the article that claimed (without citation) that Perl was originally named "Pearl", after the " pearl of great price" of Matthew 13.
One source for this claim is Silberman, Steve (2000).
"Scripting on the Lido Deck".
WIRED magazine. 8 (5). {{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help), which says, in part:
Perhaps the writer (who spoke at length with Larry) misunderstood what Larry was getting at. — Mark Dominus ( talk) 21:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 |
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 |
This article seems to be remarkably short on criticism of perl. — Ashley Y 00:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh goodness me, be careful with that box if you're going to open it. (Why? Have a read through the archives to see the approach you shouldn't take.) — Hex (❝?!❞) 00:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that that Perl receives a lot of criticism for it's 'philosophy'. I think that this shouldn't be part of a programming language's article, but instead in an article related to the particular 'philosophy'. Maybe it's sometimes better to call them paradigms. For example Object-oriented programming has criticism. Then there are design decisions, like a big core library. I don't really see how the amount of stuff one ships can really become criticism. It would be better to add this fact to the article at let the reader decide whether it is a good thing or not. Another topic is readability. Perl obfuscation is very popular, but this doesn't mean it's impossible or harder to write readable (well, that's very subjective anyway) code than it is in any comparable language. I think the default implementation of objects should is outdated for a scripting language. One could compare this to Lua (programming language), but there is Moose and with Devel::Declare it doesn't look to different from very object oriented languages, like Ruby for example. I think all this criticism should therefor be mentioned as facts inside there rest of the article. Some people prefer one way, while others prefer it the other. I think this would also be the only way to comply with Wikipedia's principle of neutrality. If we just add facts information also won't be deleted, because someone with a different opinion. -- Athaba ( talk) 18:43, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Perl drawbacks are mentioned, but some of perls most important qualities are overlooked; for example - programmer errors (aka "Code Quality") and the high-level nature of perl make perl implementations more robust and considerably faster to reach a market and maintain afterwards.
It's unfair to discuss "performance" and consider only the speed that code runs - ignoring the speed it took programmers to write that code, the correctness of the code itself, and the time it's going to take more programmers in future to maintain it. Given modern CPU speeds and the pace of internet business (not to mention the lack of real problems actually needing rapid low-level CPU-intensive solutions), development performance is overwhelmingly more important anyhow. 203.45.103.88 ( talk) 09:42, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
This isn't a tutorial. It shouldn't read like one. The syntax section does not need examples. This needs heavily whittled down, it's a whole article in itself. Chris Cunningham 16:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we should move the history section back down to the end of the article. It may be logical to begin any subject by reciting its history, that's not usually the first thing that people consulting an encyclopedia want to see. People reading the Perl article in WikiPedia want a basic overview and introduction, and that's what the Overview section is for. Swmcd 15:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Generally, there is one main version of a software program. It is the one with the highest version number, the "latest and greatest". Any version below that is not being actively maintained. Perl is differnt, in that, if someone looks at the ActiveState website, they will see both a 5.8 version and a 5.6 version. Perhaps we should add a paragraph or two describing how and why there are two versions of perl5 being maintained and updated. TakingUpSpace 01:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
"sigils...which identifies the data type being accessed (not the type of the variable itself)"
It seems sigils do identify variable type, whether it be array, hash or scalar variable, while the data type is based on context. If you call an array variable with a $ instead of a @, its not going read in scalar context and return the amount of elements, it just going to be empty, or give an error if using strict.-- 71.229.77.97 02:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
$ perl -we 'my @foo=(1,2,3); print "$foo\n"' Name "main::foo" used only once: possible typo at -e line 1. Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at -e line 1.
-- H3xx 16:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
my %hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2); print "%hash";
will produce "%foo"; the hash isn't interpolated. There IS, however, a way to interpolate a hash using a slice:
my %hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2); print "@hash{keys %hash}"; # -- OR -- print "@hash{qw/a b/}";
will produce "1 2". Does anyone think it should be changed to read "sigils allow some variables to be interpolated" or "sigils allow scalar and array variables to be interpolated"? -- H3xx 16:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
In perl6, sigils refer to the data structure and not the data itself. For example, if you get something out of an array, in perl5 it would be prefixed by a $ (scalar) but in perl6 this is no longer the case. It would be prefixed by a @ in this case. I don't like it either. Laurensvh 00:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
There is a bit of confusion above, mixed in with some accurate statements. An extended example might help: Given the following scalar, array, hash and reference variables:
use strict;
my $one = 1;
my $sref = \$one; # scalar reference
my @digits = (1..9);
my $aref = \@digits; # array reference
my %cardinals = (one=>1, two=>2,three=>3);
my $href = \%cardinals; # hash reference
my $fsref = sub {return $sref;}; # sub reference; invoked sub returns scalar ref
my $faref = sub {return $aref;}; # sub reference; invoked sub returns array ref
the following things all interpolate (note that they all start with $ or @):
print "$one\n"; # scalar var
print "$$sref\n"; # dereferenced scalar reference
print "${&$fsref}\n"; # dereferenced sub invocation, returning scalar ref
print "@digits\n"; # array var
print "$digits[5]\n"; # array element
print "$aref->[4]\n"; # array element, via array reference
print "@digits[4..6]\n"; # array slice
print "@$aref\n"; # dereferenced array reference
print "@{&$faref}\n"; # dereferenced sub invocation, returning array ref
print "$cardinals{one}\n"; # hash element
print "@cardinals{'two','three'}\n";
# hash slice
print "@cardinals{sort keys %cardinals}\n";
# all values in alphabetical order by respective key
With anything that interpolates as a list the final format of the string that renders the list is affected by the $" ($LIST_SEPARATOR) special variable; this defines the glue character(s) interposed between each element of the list:
local $" = ', ';
print "@digits\n";
print "@digits[4..6]\n";
local $" = '; ';
print "@$aref\n";
print "@cardinals{'one','two'}\n";
Nothing that starts with any other character interpolates:
print %cardinals,"\n"; # hash 'unwound'
print "%cardinals\n"; # just a literal
print "{&$faref}->[3]\n"; # $faref (CODE ref.) interpolated as string
print *one,"\n"; # typeglob, recognised
print ${*one},"\n"; # not quite sure what this is, but not an error
print "*one\n"; # typeglob not interpolated
print "&$faref->[3]\n"; # run-time error as $faref not array ref
I wrote a short tutorial on using Perl DBI at Wikibooks: b:Perl Programming/DBI - Perl Database Inteface.
Currently it only has one example for Oracle. That's the only DBMS with which i had personal experience.
It would be great if someone could add a section about connection to a free database, such as MySQL.
Thanks in advance. -- Amir E. Aharoni 11:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Again there seems to be a bit of confusion interspersed with true statements...more to come shortly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.101.255.40 ( talk) 12:30, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Scalar variables, array variables, hash variables and reference variables can be either lexically scoped (declared with my
) or package scoped (declared with our
). If declared with my
, they don't exist in a
namespace as such.; if the same name, eg $x
, is used in differently lexical scopes, they are differentiated by the compiler. If package scoped they exist in a namespace; internally package-scoped variables $a
and @a
in a package are connected by the typeglob a, which can be accessed (this is seldom required) as *a
. Other named but sigil-less things (filehandles, directory handles, formats, subroutine) names are all package scoped, and also 'belong' to a typeglob; they are differentiated by the context (which is occasionally ambiguous); conventions also help: handles and formats should be all UPPER CASE, and maybe subs should have a leading cap. In any case, as regards variables, from the programmer's point of view, whether lexically or package scoped, the variables $a
, @a
and %a
are all independent of each other (unless of course you make an explicit connection, eg $a = \@a
).
Ivanberti ( talk) 13:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
my
' in the above paragraph, as the standard texts apply the term 'dynamic' to package variables. Actually there's still a bit of a problem with terminology here: our
declarations are also lexical, in that the corresponding variable is only visible in the lexical scope(s) in which they are declared.Ivanberti ( talk) 07:34, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
My reading of "Fun with Perl" was this: it was mostly about the community. Thus, I've re-written it as such, and added a number of details and references. I've also removed some examples that I dont' think actually helped any.
Please, let me know what you think. I'd really like to see the whole thing expanded on the community front to detail some of the growth of the community and the phases of involvement from Larry's daughter / Perl annoucement in 1987 on Usenet all the way up to the RFC process for Perl 6. - Harmil 23:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
16:38, 2007 February 28 Aristotle Pagaltzis (Talk | contribs) (→History - [...] enhancements aren’t necessarily minor)
Can we list the enhancements that aren't minor?
Swmcd 16:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
From the article:"All variables are marked by a leading sigil, which identifies the data type being accessed (not the type of the variable itself)"
I don't think the differnece between the data type being accessed and the type of the variable itself is clear. ori 18:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
i, the maintainer of the german perl article, have plans in mind to replace this article complete with a translation of my work because i think is much better structured and its more readable, but i dont want only destray your work. i think it would help if someone would agree here or help, since me english could heve some lesser flaws. no fear it wount happen next week. (but better i prepare you now huahahaha..) Lichtkind 20:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
On the de.wikipedia.org, I've been looking over the Perl article to see what improvements might be available. I don't read German, but being a native English speaker and this being a technical article about a primarily English-language subject, enough of the words and sentence structure is similar that I can get a sense of the article. Here are some things I noticed:
Overall, I'm not sure that I see that there's a huge value in adopting the German version, even given significant translation effort. I do think that there are useful lessons to be learned, and I'd invite anyone who speaks both languages to peruse both articles and merge improvements in either direction. - Harmil 23:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I feel the best thing to do would be for Lichtkind to create a subpage here and place his/her translated article into it for the community to take a look at and discuss, rather than going so far as to replace the actual article. — Hex (❝?!❞) 23:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Common to replace was only my first intend 1,5 years ago. i think best starting point is the intro. as the first contact with the reader it should provide a quick overview over most important aspects of perl. To improve that is the fastest and most visible way to improve the article. therefore i will translate first our version of it and we could change it that it will fit into this text. This first column requires always the highest standarts in info density and understandability, for people who dont want read the whole text or foreign to that subject. because this high standart it also stresses more the different views about how to write the article or different horizont of knowledge and we could get faster in sync, what would easy the work for the rest of article. hough. Lichtkind 11:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
So whe no more comments coming i will start this, i also started an review proces to better the style of the german. we have some very strict rules here what belongs where, which i mostly agree with. so maybe this article can profit from this action too. cu. Lichtkind 12:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
The section on types is misleading, FOO
in print FOO "bar"
is not a file handle but a bareword that happens to resolve to a handle, it's actually short for print {*{__PACKAGE__ . "::FOO"}{IO}} "bar"
. Just like:
@a = 1 .. 2; push a, 3; #
Is actually short for:
@a = 1 .. 2; push @{*{"main::a"}{ARRAY}}, 3;
Actually on the whole I feel that the explanation of Perl's data types would be much better if it started by explaining globs somewhat like Advanced Perl Programming's Introspection chapter does. It would then explain how package variables map to globs and later lexical variables (lexicals are really just scoped pseudo-globs) and magic types.
Anyway I was too lazy to change this myself, feel free to ignore this:)
- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I dispute all of the latest changes made by user:Aristotle Pagaltzis in there entirety. Cpan is more aptly described as an "online repository", than an FTP archive, largely because FTP has little to do with CPAN, and because Repository is already a wiki article to which CPAN is an example of.
In other news "created and improved upon by its 5,000 plus authors" is fundamentally different than "by over 5,000 authors," which is even deceptive. No conclusive data says CPAN has 5000 authors, only that Perl-pause has 5000+ members (to which every CPAN author must be.) This is a fallacy of equivocation, because all CPAN authors are Pause members, does not mean all Pause members are CPAN authors. I might revert the change. -- EvanCarroll 09:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Also, the article seems quite inconsistent with regard to CPAN - is it a proper noun ("CPAN") or not ("The CPAN"). I vote the former. LeoNerd ( talk) 20:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the reference to Perl being ' post-modern'. The post-modern page makes no reference to computers or programming. I don't see what benefit there is in calling Perl post-modern. If we call Perl post-modern, then so should virtually all languages since 1990. Is there any reference to Perl being called post-modern in any other text? peterl 19:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
(
help), from a talk at Linux World. Also on Larry Wall's Web site at
http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.htmlThis article received its Good Article rating on 14 December 2005 from an editor who hearkened back to a kinder, gentler era when it was not outside of norms to just simply plonk down a Good Article tag for no other reason than WP:ILIKEIT. Alas, the standards for retaining this pretty green trinket have tightened over the year; in the present regime, someone unassociated with writing this article (a reviewer) should examine the article with respect to the good article criteria and, on the various standards cited, expresses up, down, or neutral sentiments, plus an aggregate sentiment, upon which retaining the pretty little trinket relies. By posting this remark here, I'm not suggesting that the article has gone bad or presently fails the criteria, but I am noting the absence of a review that is a hallmark of the present process, and, in the fullness of time, a review should be performed on this article. With the absence of a review, this article is a delisting candidate. Note that, for an editor to delist this article, the due-diligence of a good article review is required so that specific reasons for delisting can be given by the dislisting editor; or, for that matter, offering cogent reasons why the Good Article mark should remain. Anything short of a fair review is unfair to editors who contribute to this article regularly and in good faith. Drop any questions about this on my talk page. Take care — Gosgood 13:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
In the interests of expanding the lead section I propose to add a third paragraph such as:
If no objection is raised, I propose adding this as the third paragraph of the lead. -- Ancheta Wis ( talk) 03:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I have edited the lead section and expanded it. If anyone finds any errors, please correct. Shekure ( talk) 12:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
I was only able to understand the first three words of this Wikipedia article. Could someone add a sentence that explains what Perl is/does that non professional computer users can understand? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drstk ( talk • contribs) 12:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The syntax highlighting in the examples is using some kind of incredibly poor parser that doesn't understand basic Perl syntax, causing it to be misleading: for example, when illustrating $#, it formats everything after the # as a comment!
If whatever's being used here can't be fixed, I think the highlighting should be removed, because it is making the code harder to read, not easier. (Posting a comment rather than being bold and doing it myself because I'd probably just be taken for a vandal and reverted immediately if I did that...) 78.105.167.145 ( talk) 22:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
$album = q(It's David Bowie's "Heroes");
I have applied semi-protection to this article for a period expiring on November 5, 2008. This is because point of view editorializing is being repeatedly inserted into the article by anonymous users, following my temporary blocking of User:Getly for doing the same and violating the three-revert rule. The users are all appearing within the 12.72.157.* range and I do not want to apply a range block that may inconvenience innocent users. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
in the beginning section there is:
"Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA, in 1987"
after the content:
"Larry Wall began work on Perl in 1987, while working as a programmer at Unisys,[6] and released version 1.0 to the comp.sources.misc newsgroup on December 18, 1987."
If you read just the first one you will get impression that the Perl was "born" in NASA but that's not truth, or?
Jozef.kutej ( talk) 13:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
On the subject of Perl parsing, I've published (in the Perl Review) a three part series containing rigorous proofs of Adam Kennedy's conjecture. Parts of the paragraph on this topic are wrong or misleading. The Perl Review articles are now available online.
I'm going make appropriate changes. I'm aware of WP:COS, and will try to stay within its confines.
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 18:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
the infobox says perl was influenced by c++. Is there a reference for this? Curtis Newton ( talk) 19:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Ambiguous pronouns can be acceptable: for example, in
The dog sniffed the plant, until it noticed a cat.
the reader can be expected to figure out that, of the two possible referents for "it", it was the dog that noticed the cat, not the plant. The reader does this using his semantic knowledge.
The discussion describing Perl run/compile phase vs. time contains difficult material about a counter-intuitive, unusual and often misunderstood and mistated aspect of Perl. The reader cannot be relied on to find ambiguous pronoun referents quickly and easily using semantic knowledge. Pronoun referents have to be completely unambiguous. Where that's not practical, we have to reword the sentence to eliminate the pronoun.
My original was
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but can also be in compile time during the run phase.
Here the two coordinated predicates must have the same subject, so there is no ambiguity. However, the reader is required to see that the "but" coordinates two predicates, and that perhaps might be difficult.
Another editor's intermediate revision was
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but it can also be in compile time during the run phase.
The "it" can refer to any of three things, with "Perl" and "the compile phase" being the most likely. Semantic knowledge will tell you that "Perl" must be the referent, but we can't safely assume that a reader can easily and accurately supply that degree of semantic knowledge.
My compromise is
Perl is in compile time at most points during the compile phase, but Perl can also be in compile time during the run phase.
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 18:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was not moved. Closed per WP:SNOW. 199.125.109.88 ( talk) 18:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Perl → Perl (programming language) — Note that the target name is already a redirect to this article. And after that, i think that Perl (disambiguation) should be moved/renamed to "Perl". A bot would have to be set up to update the thousands of links to this article. -- Jerome Potts ( talk) 08:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
The article says in History: On December 18, 2007, [...] Perl 5.10.0 was released. [...] In December 2008, Perl 5.8.9 was released.. Do I understand that there was a backward-numbering, 5.10.0 --> 5.8.9? Was the earlier version depreciated? - DePiep ( talk) 07:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
The section on Community now has a new entry about an aggregation site at http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/ . It makes the bold statement that "This is the main source of news for modern Perl". I hadn't heard of it before - can anyone apart from the original author support that statement? 'The main source' seems quite strong. I'm tempted to remove it, but wanted to get some other's feedback first. Thanks. peterl ( talk) 03:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Anticipating the deletion of the IRC section I will add that the IRC channels mentioned can be found in a book "The Definitive Guide to Catalyst" and some other books as well. Stefan.petrea ( talk) 00:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
The old history section was just awful - it jumped from 1994 to 2007 to 2009. A whole lot of Perl happened in between. I took what I could from the perldelta's, as well as the perlhist docs on perldoc.perl.org, and tried to summarize it as best I could. If there's anything I missed or if I'm incorrect anywhere, feel free to fix it. -- Pepkaro ( talk) 09:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I have deleted the part of the article that says it's a glue language and it's good for sysadmins. This is not true and there are plenty of examples in this direction. A lot of people doing science use Perl for their work in bioinformatics and some other places as well. It's not a glue language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stefan.petrea ( talk • contribs) 08:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
The following section was removed from the article
Boolean data type:
begin removed text
In the
Perl programming language, there is no distinction between numbers, strings, and other non-aggregate data types. (They are all called "scalar".) Aggregate types without any elements, empty strings, numbers which equal a value of 0, the strings ""
and "0"
, and undefined variables evaluate to "false" when used in a Boolean context. All other values (including strings such as 0.0
and 0E0
which are "zero but true") evaluate to "true".
Elements of aggregates may also be tested against "existence" or "non-existence"
[2], and all variables may be evaluated as either "defined" or "undefined".
[3] (An element of a hash or array that has been assigned the value undef
exists but is undefined.) In Perl this distinction is important when evaluating scalars in a Boolean manner to prevent "false falses" where one of the above values should be considered "true".
There are no built-in true or false constants in Perl 5, however the values do exist internally in Perl6.
1
is traditionally used for true, and constructs such as ... while 1
are special-cased to avoid advisory warnings. Internally, recent versions of Perl 5 have a variety of predefined "yes" and "no" values, so the recommended way to provide a false value has recently shifted from undef
to !1
.
end removed text
Is there a place for this text in the Perl-related articles? Perhaps in the Wikibook? Thanks, and all the best, --
Jorge Stolfi (
talk)
23:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
ThePilgrim ( talk) 15:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC) The preamble on this section mentions hashes, the table has Associative array. one or other needs to be used consistently throughout the entry.
Shouldn't
The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal).[32]
which is found in the second paragraph of the Overview section say something like
According to the man page, "[t]he language is intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal)."
possibly citing that and including a link to an online manual page? But, as is, it looks like it might be original writing or paraphrase when it's a quote. -- 74.162.148.157 ( talk) 20:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to bring this article back to GA material. One of the comments on the 2009 reassessment was that "The Language structure section contains far too much detail and is written like a programming manual". I think the section should be split into Perl language structure, or possibly Perl syntax and semantics to follow the Python model. The section here could then be condensed into a more theoretical description of functional and object-oriented styles, and the use of regular expressions. (I'm taking the lead here again from the corresponding Python section, which has a very good summary of the language.) Feezo (Talk) 07:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
When I Google for "perl pastimes", out of the first 10 results, 5 are this article, 3 are a book by Adam Perl about non-Perl pastimes, one is a list of books and categories on Amazon.com, and a single result is "Programming Pastimes" which includes code in Perl (and I suspect that "pastimes" is being used generically, not to refer to some specific aspect of programming/Perl culture). The book, according to Amazon, contains 3 instances of "pastime", none of which refer to a specific cultural phenomenon. So in the absence of any evidence whatsoever I'm deleting the claim that "Perl's pastimes have become a defining element of the Perl community.". -- holizz ( talk) 17:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
local
and You Can't Get There From Here. If you have any more comments on this article, I'd love to hear them.
Feezo
(Talk)
20:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Do my eyes deceive me? Did someone actually write, "Things that are different should look different" in reference to Perl??
Ha ha, that's a good one. I think that was a joke. Or, if not, then see if you can tell what this prints (without running it):
for ($x=0; $x<10; $x++) {
$x[$x] = $x+1;
$x{$x[$x]} = $x;
}
print $x{5};
NCdave (
talk)
10:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The IRC section really could be better. Right now it's just a table of networks and channels, and doesn't explain further. Problem is, I very much doubt we can find reliable sources for even a third of them. We might have to pull that whole section, or just shorten it into a ref to http://www.irc.perl.org, unless someone has other ideas? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 11:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I was surprised to see Perl omitted from a list of open source software. It goes without saying that you have to understand Perl, etc. to even read its source code, but why is open source mentioned only tangentially in the article? If this is an unimportant detail for the article, it still would be pertinent to the Open source article. If you reply on this page, then I can edit the open source page appropriately. -- Ancheta Wis ( talk) 11:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Jcrypto, I've removed your Examples section from the main article. I think it has some good content, but almost all of that information already exists on the Perl language structure page. That page was broken out a few months ago because it just cluttered up the article. Almost all programming language articles on Wikipedia (at least, those of fairly notable languages like C or Python) only have very minor amounts of code or examples in them, relegating the specifics to a separate article. Some places where I think your suggestions could be added to the Perl language structure articles:
But generally, remember that Wikipedia is not a reference manual. We don't need to go into complete details about how every little feature works. Code examples to illustrate points are good, but code by itself with little narrative is just cluttered.
IMHO, ofcourse. :)
Pepkaro ( talk) 17:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
I have tried--twice--to assert that PERL is declining in popularity as a CGI language. The edits were reverted twice. I am now reinstating the statement again, and I am writing to exhort the anonymous editor NOT to behave again as he did. Namely:
This is an encyclopedia, not a football forum. If you don't like PERL is not popular anymore for a certain application, I'm sorry, but don't try to mislead the public with insulting edit summaries, unjustified reverts and misleading sourcing. Thanks. Complainer ( talk) 11:24, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Isn't the fact , that perl is interpreted ,just an implementation detail? There exist (or can exist) other implementations of the language ,which can translate it to JVM bytecode or CIL etc. Perl 6 has a language specification,so it's possible theoretically to create a perl implementation , which is compiled.(or not interpreted) 78.90.139.102 ( talk) 17:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
Will Coleda recently deleted the part of the article that claimed (without citation) that Perl was originally named "Pearl", after the " pearl of great price" of Matthew 13.
One source for this claim is Silberman, Steve (2000).
"Scripting on the Lido Deck".
WIRED magazine. 8 (5). {{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help), which says, in part:
Perhaps the writer (who spoke at length with Larry) misunderstood what Larry was getting at. — Mark Dominus ( talk) 21:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
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