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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Standard Distribution
Message-ID: <1991Feb9.034258.22419@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 9 Feb 91 03:42:58 GMT
References: <893@ticnj.UUCP> <1991Feb05.111212.12131@convex.com>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 50

As quoted from <1991Feb05.111212.12131@convex.com> by tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen):
+---------------
| This is a problem, because too much of the non-university world thinks
| (to their loss, IMHO) that only AT&T makes UNIX.  I don't think we'll
+---------------

And too many university types think (to their loss, IMHO) that only BSD makes
*useful* UNIX.  I've seen a few BSD attempts to invent AT&T's sdiff; until
someone on the BSD end finally discovered sdiff and reimplemented it with
non-AT&T code, the only usable effort was Emerge (a package for GNU Emacs).
I've also encountered a number of other useful utilities which are *standard*
in System V and lacking in BSD.  Why else would "dual universe" and "merged"
Unixes be so popular?

Neither AT&T UNIX nor BSD UNIX is complete in and of itself.

+---------------
| POSIX standards won't help.  (Nor would I want to see what POSIX would
| do to perl.)
+---------------

Ugh.  I can just imagine the monstrosity they'd leave us with.

+---------------
| One thing I've been trying to learn is how many other vendors, either
| hardware or software (and what size customer base) ship perl with their
| product.  Anyone know of any besides us?  
+---------------

Perl is one step from being shipped on all the systems Telotech, Inc. sells.
(That one step depends on events in the next few months.)  I already use it
for development scripts, and have a few utility scripts in an accounting/
order entry/inventory control system I've been working on for the past 1 1/2
years.  (Then again, another small but significant part of that system is
written in SBprolog.  Convention be d*mned, I go with what works and does so
in a reasonable amount of time.)

+---------------
| U=brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu; echo "/From: $U/h:j" >>~/News/KILL; expire -f $U
+---------------

Some time back, I asked Dan "Whose dolly have you busted?" (context: the
replacement moderator for comp.sources.misc).  I guess I know now.  Why?

++Brandon
-- 
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