Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uc!shamash!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!magill From: magill@operations.upenn.edu (PENNnet Oper/Planning) Newsgroups: alt.sources.d Subject: Re: uutraffic report (in perl) Message-ID: Date: 22 Nov 89 19:47:28 GMT References: <4025@mhres.mh.nl> <1194@radius.UUCP> <3273@convex.UUCP> Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Organization: DCCS, University of Pennsylvania Lines: 27 In-reply-to: jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu's message of 21 Nov 89 22:51:57 GMT > I don't think Tom is advocating Perl as a complete replacement for the > Unix Way(TM), but as a complement to it. There is a type of > programming task that's too clumsy or slow (or both) when written the > "old-fashioned" way, but not easily implemented in C (or just not > worth the time). This is what Perl is for. By some strange > coincidence, tasks of this type are extremely common in system > administration. I suspect a straw poll of Perl users would turn up a > large number of sysadmins. > Coming from the environment of managing multiple systems of various dialects and operating systems "universal" solutions are a godsend. My "login.com", ".login", ".profile" files all create an environment based upon my needs and desires. Based in things like GNU and PERL I can monitor and maintain multiple systems with multiple operating systems (I don't consider Ultrix, BSD, H-UX, SystemV, 386 SystemV, to be the same operating system - because from a system adiminstrators point of view - they don't all act quite the same and we all know that even though VMS claims to be POSIX compliant, it sure doesn't look like Unix(tm)). -- William H. Magill Manager, PENNnet Operations Planning Data Communications and Computing Services (DCCS) University of Pennsylvania Internet: magill@dccs.upenn.edu magill@eniac.seas.upenn.edu magill@upenn.edu