I’m not very familiar with Bash. However, from my personal experience, I can cook up small apps quite fast in Perl, especially when dealing with text (well, that’s what Perl is for).

What I’d suggest is to pick up a Perl book, and try writing a few automating scripts in it. If you don’t like Perl, move on to Python. But even if you stick to Perl, I’d recommend getting familiar with Python eventually. This is because both Python and Perl are popular languages for automation tasks, especially in UNIX environments where they’re pre-installed.

My initial thoughts are of Perl, it looks a bit like a Bash script, and it is widely touted that it has things like awk and sed built-in.

My main interests for scripting are in automating tasks within UNIX environments (predominately OS X and Solaris).

Out of Python and Perl, which would you advise me to learn (first)?

I think I can’t do programming any more but still
do it for bread and butter. I am frustrated with my life thinking on how much to learn in this life?

Okay! coming to the point….I like python but
with perl Moose, there is no challenge from any
language for perl for common applications.

Python libraries are good but also annoy me
with their narrow attitude. They appear to tell
me like “use this only this way, otherwise ….. This is only the best way to do it”. But this is just my opinion.

Finally, I stopped learning python/PHP and am sticking to only perl. When it rains, I too will get a proper framework and elegance (perl 6). Also, my waiting paid me MOOSE like library.

I am with perl for lifetime (another 30 years?)
So, the summary is, whatever the language you choose, stick to life for it. Someone will improve it for u. Even old COBOL jobs are around. HAAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Cheers

The big differences are that Perl (used to) flatten lists and not treat them as basic datum, and pass copies into subroutines. They tried to use globs to pass by reference, and eventually succumbed to tacking on a full ref/deref syntax. Python uses references from the get-go and passes by reference into functions. This makes it easier to construct nested data structures in Python, but you must constantly watch for the reference, shallow copy, deep copy issues.

You’re right. Python is indeed elegant.

Personally for me, Perl is great for some small scripts doing quick tasks. I use Python for anything “larger.”

Another good point you mentioned is about the bad way in which scripts turn into applications. Many people think that an application is “many scripts put together.” However, that’s wrong.

I understand your frustration, because many people putting their code online don’t write it the way it should have been written. It’s a total mess to read them.

At the end of the day, one thing’s clear. Keeping all the specific languages aside, writing well structured applications is an art in itself.

And one more thing, thanks for the comment!

Python has one fundamental data type; object. Everything else is a subclass of object. Variables can only hold references to objects.

The inability to contact a string with an int is a property of the string and int classes, not a property of the core language. If you actually WANT to be able to concat strings and ints you can easily do it by subclassing string and int and overloading the + operator so that it does the conversion automatically. But that wouldn’t be very pythonic; one of the design goals of python is to be powerful without resorting to “magic”.

One of the things about perl that pissed me off was never really knowing what was actually IN a scalar; is it a string? a number? a reference to a box with rocks in it? Maybe all three depending on whatever unintuitive implicit rules perl decides to apply to it depending on context. Ruby does the same stuff, drives me nuts. It’s fine for scripts, terrible for applications, and scripts have a bad way of turning into applications. “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.” — Jamie Zawinski

You’re right about the boss part. Some people only have a narrow knowledge about doing certain tasks, and normally don’t prefer any other methods of accomplishing it.

I actually learned Python first, and then Perl because it was also a popularly used language (regardless of what online newbies suggest).

Well, now that we’re talking about Python, I’m eagerly waiting for all those libraries and tools like iPython to be compatible with Python 3.