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From: goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Needed: a pointer for a perl compare script (long, sorry..)
Message-ID: <1990Dec7.083412.8426@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 90 08:34:12 GMT
References: <1990Dec04.230436.8432@chinet.chi.il.us> <1990Dec5.060300.21410@midway.uchicago.edu> <275E7B47.2EB9@tct.uucp>
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In article <275E7B47.2EB9@tct.uucp> chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>According to goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz):
>>Perl is not the only language around that is optimized for file,
>>string, and symbol processing, which has associative arrays, and handles
>>sorting and printing elegantly.  If you can't think of any examples off-
>>hand then mail me, and I'll be glad to provide you with a few.
>
>Come now, Richard.  If you criticize in public, you must put up your
>facts in public.  Name these other languages.  Oh yes, and please
>include availability and cost information.

Please, not one of those "come now" responses :-).  I felt it completely
inappropriate to go into language comparisons here.  I assumed that most
readers would know of other alternatives, and that my posting would serve
merely as a reminder not to get too outlandish in our claims about perl.
If you are going to press me, I'll gladly offer you a brief response re-
garding alternatives I had in mind:

In the case mentioned, I didn't see how perl offered distinct advantages
over nawk.  Nawk has most of the traits mentioned above, and is much more
widely available.  If you would like a good example of a language that has
all of the characteristics noted above, then I'd suggest you look at Icon.
Icon is a general purpose programming language with Snobolish string-
handling capabilities, automatic type conversions, associative arrays,
and so on.  Icon would have been just as easily applied to the particular
problem at hand as perl.

As for cost and availability, Icon is supported by government grant, and
has traditionally been PD.  Despite its PD status, Icon is available
through a very fine distribution system, and the software itself is much
less buggy and much more stable than perl's.  Icon is fully documented
in _The Icon Programming Language_ by Griswold & Griswold (2nd ed.; Prent-
ice Hall).  It is available, not only for Unix, MS-DOS, and the Mac (as
in perl's case), but is also available for VM/CMS, Ultrix, MVS/XA, VMS,
Mach, AEGIS, OS/2, Amiga DOS, and probably others I haven't thought of.
You can ftp it from many sites, probably the most accessible being cs.
arizona.edu.

This posting is not intended as an argument against using perl, by the
way.

-Richard (goer@sophist.uchicago.edu)