Author Topic: Learning Perl  (Read 14197 times)

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Offline XclioTopic starter

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Learning Perl
« on: July 10, 2008, 10:59:11 AM »
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So I have dabbled in a bit of stuff here and there but I have decided it is time to actually learn perl.  I have alot of freedom in what I can do at work regarding this but I can't think of anything "useful" to create, I have all the licenses in the world to create basically any file I want but I need something to be useful but it also needs to really challenge me and force me to learn about every aspect of perl I can think of.  Help me out with some ideas!

For ideas consider I am a Network Systems Security Engineer, basically in charge of network security for the US Navy.

Offline Tidus

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2008, 11:05:49 AM »
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Well i don't know exactly what perl does or what it is capable of.  So i wouldn't know what to ask for "in a project sense".
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Offline TrailMyx

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2008, 11:25:36 AM »
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Here's a little comparison of Perl vs. PHP written by someone who obviously likes PHP:

http://www.netconcepts.com/php-versus-perl/

I tend to agree with the dislike of Perl; I just don't like it's language syntax; that's part of the reason I went to Python.  That and my lust for lists and my intrigue for the limitless integer.

But for web programming, you just can't go wrong with PHP these days.  Perl is the next most supported scripting language, and Python lags behind at a distant 3rd (but is still my fav).
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Offline XclioTopic starter

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2008, 11:49:33 AM »
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What we use perl for mostly is to automate installations and such but really it can be manipulated to do just about anything you could possibly want from what I have been able to tell.

Offline TrailMyx

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2008, 12:04:56 PM »
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What we use perl for mostly is to automate installations and such but really it can be manipulated to do just about anything you could possibly want from what I have been able to tell.

Don't count Python out then.  I like the syntax more, and I think it's got more language features and is inherently OOP.
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Offline XclioTopic starter

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2008, 06:37:13 PM »
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Maybe I will learn python after I get my head wrapped around perl then :)

Offline gateCrasher

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2008, 07:04:21 PM »
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Maybe I will learn python after I get my head wrapped around perl then :)

Python is great. But....

Python is object oriented. A lot of people have a hard time understanding object oriented concepts because for most of the things they do, procedural is good enough (small projects, programs,etc). Perl is like a mash up of C, shell, awk, sed, and the kitchen sink. There's more than one way to do it (that's the motto). You can get caught up in the all of the idiosyncracies of syntax, but you can also make it very clean and understandable. I've heard C programmers say that perl looks like line noise. That's because you can fit a 1000 line C program into a command line length perl statement to accomplish the same thing.

Php is nice too, but I'd prefer to stick to perl for sysadmin or task oriented things, and php for web development, although php is quite capable of both (just not as popular). If you're working from a UNIX based system, one of the hard things to beat about perl is perldoc and the man pages. Python has an excellent help system, but I find it a bit more tedious to use.

Decide what you're going to do. Are you a scripter or are you a programmer with a computer science objective? I think if you're a scripter, ie, can whip up bash scripts, etc, then perl is going to feel natural to you. If you're a programmer with a CS slant, go with something more programmer like, such as python, C or C++, or java. You'll get more out of it.

/gC

Offline XclioTopic starter

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2008, 05:12:23 AM »
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Well actually I am a Network guy :)  Just dabbling in Perl as we write alot of scripts to automate installations and such and when I get bored it gives me something to do.  Us network guys that have stable networks have alot of down time lol.

Offline gateCrasher

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2008, 01:28:30 PM »
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Well actually I am a Network guy :)  Just dabbling in Perl as we write alot of scripts to automate installations and such and when I get bored it gives me something to do.  Us network guys that have stable networks have alot of down time lol.

Yep, a few years ago, I wrote a bunch of scripts for the network engineers at work. There's a Cisco module on CPAN that pretty much allows you to do anything you can dream up. They were thrilled.

/gC

Offline XclioTopic starter

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Re: Learning Perl
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2008, 05:17:11 AM »
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A buddy of mine wrote a nice little script to handle vlan changes for those non network types that work on our team so they don't need to bother us all the time lol.

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