Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: Cmail - C or perl or whatever
Message-ID: <14810@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 27 Oct 89 14:48:07 GMT
References: <1125@kl-cs.UUCP> <2473@convex.UUCP>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Organization: ^
Lines: 24
Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:

For my money, if the program is SIMPLE enough to do in Bourne that's
the way you should do it.  It really just doesn't matter how wonderful
some people think perl is, or C for that matter.  Most vendor supplied
control scripts are in Bourne, so *your* new control scripts will fit in
most seamlessly by following the standard.  If the job is too complex
for Bourne, then of course you use the simplest tool that suffices.

And please note that the cute device

	#!/usr/bin/perl [-flags]

which lets some users run perl scripts directly by name as ziplessly as
if they were standalone executables, DOES NOT WORK everywhere.  On my
system, it would be necessary to create companion shell scripts or Korn
shell aliases to invoke any such script.

But finally -- if a reader thinks a certain application ought to be in
one language rather than another, the way to show it is to submit a
version in the desired language!  Not just sigh about the other fellow's
poor choice of platform.
-- 
'We have luck only with women --    \\\     Tom Neff
          not spacecraft!'         *-((O    tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
 -- R. Kremnev, builder of FOBOS      \\\   uunet!bfmny0!tneff (UUCP)