Perl Vs Python

[Steve Holden]

"John Smith" <someone at microsoft.com> wrote ...
> Steve:
>
> I am not trying to get anyone to fight anyone, quite he contrary.. At 56 I
> have spent a great deal of time/energy helping people to get along, or at
> least understand each others. I am probably more proud of this than my
> technical achievement (and I have done some neat stuff...).
>
> I am just a software enginner, with need for something like Perl, or
Python
> (or may be both), trying to figure out what would be the best investment
of
> my time.
>
> So far I have done a lot of text files processing in just plain C, (and
the
> old TECO too, some sed).
>
> I wish people were not so cynical, and see bad thing in a simple question,
> with no (none whatsoever) bad intention.
>
> Did you spend ( and I) your time answering the question, I may have
learned
> something.
>
> And by the way, if one or both of the languages has some superiority, so
be
> it, then maybe the other will either complement or bu enhanced. This is
> supposed to be the spirit of the FSF, that I greatly endorse. The KED and
> GNOME story may tell you something.
>
> If there is bigotry somewhere, let´s just reconize it for what it is and
> move on.(This may be positive too).
>
> And there is also nothing wrong at preffering a language, just for
personal
> taste... And being able to say why, is quite a good thing. (Refer to
Donald
> Knuth, or Bertrand Meyer, and others...)
>
> After lots of C, I still prefer Pascal (excepted for low level code), that
I
> find cleaner, and more object oriented (file of records!) but this is
> another story...
>
> Thanks buddy.
>
> John Smith (not my real name).
>

"John":

I understand you may be a little hesitant to reveal your identoty, but one
of the *best* things about Python is the usually high standard of courtesy
and respect afforded to newcomers.

As another poster has mentioned, there is a lot of material already
available on this topic in various Internet archives, so I'm guessing that
your experience may not have included Google, for example, from which the
search string "python perl comparison" yields about 27,000 results. It *has*
been discussed before, but that doesn't stop it being a legitimate question
on your part.

Ah, TECO! How well I remember the macros we used to write.

The first time around I was tempted to suggest it was unlikely that Python
users would have much negative to say about Python. Noticing that you had
crossposted comp.lang.perl and comp.lang.python made it appear like an
attempt to mix oil and water :-)

Anyway, good luck. Perl if a very flexible language, and as Tim Peters (a
Python guru) occasionally and colorfully points out, it has "optimized the
snot" out of regular expressions. For mungeing and forking text it's a very
practical language (hence its name). In the Python world we prefer a little
more visible structure: whitespace indentation is the most obvious
manifestation of this. Perl programs will generally be shorter, and
sometimes faster, that Python. This is a double-edged sword, however, since
when a beginner uses too many tricks it can be difficult to understand a
program when revisiting it some time after writing it.

Python, being more verbose, tends to keep it easier for beginners to
comprehend the meaning of a program.

regards
--
Steve Holden                                  http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming                 http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/
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