gEDA-user: Perl

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is more anecdotal than anything else...

> > I'm a Perl fan myself.
> 
> (shudder)

Just before I learned Perl (WAY before python existed, before perl 5
even), my manager was talking to *his* manager about this nifty new
tool called "perl" that they just discovered.  Apparently, their
metric for whether it was good or not was whether or not I knew how to
use it already ;-)

"Does DJ know how to use it?"
"No"
"Why not?"
"He hasn't needed to yet."

Shortly after, I needed it, so I learned it.  It'll be the same with
Python, just like it was with Scheme.  I'm a compiler engineer -
picking up languages is second nature to me.

It happens that most of the Fedora infrastructure is all python
scripts anyway, so it's not a big deal if I have to learn it, it's
just that I've been using Perl so far and it always seems to have the
features I want.  In this case, the key feature is:

You can implement arrays of hashes, hashes of arrays, arrays of
arrays, and hashes of hashes.

This feature, for exmaple, allows us to encode a complete gEDA project
(sch+pcb+whatever) in a single perl variable!

But as they say, if there's a way to do it in Perl, there's more than
one way to do it in Perl, so yes, the likelyhood of inconsistent
styles is very high.

(hmmm... perl pcb exporter hid...)


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