From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Jan 20 0: 2:54 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from post.mail.nl.demon.net (post-10.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E31DD37B405 for ; Sun, 20 Jan 2002 00:02:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from [212.238.194.207] (helo=tanya.raggedclown.net) by post.mail.nl.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16SCw9-00055T-00 for questions@FreeBSD.org; Sun, 20 Jan 2002 08:02:45 +0000 Received: by tanya.raggedclown.net (tanya.raggedclown.intra, from userid 500) id A4385117F; Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:02:43 +0100 (CET) Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:02:43 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: what is a good language for system administration? Message-ID: <20020120080243.GB1341@raggedclown.net> References: <20020119205810.B17795@xs4all.nl> <20020119162001.O5440-100000@fremont.bolingbroke.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020119162001.O5440-100000@fremont.bolingbroke.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.24i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 04:33:59PM -0800, Ken Bolingbroke wrote: > > > On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 rene@xs4all.nl wrote: > > > So I've learned how to do basic scripting in /bin/sh. But boy-oh-boy is that > > language arcane. ;-) > > > > What other language do you guys advise for system administration tasks such > > as > > > Perl is _THE_ sysadmin language, really. It runs on just about > everything, and in fact, most common versions of UNIX come with it already > installed. - Shell, well you mastered that :) - Unix tools to complement the shell, awk, sed, grep(s), ed (yes, I said ed :), using "ed" in scripts with "here" documents is a much underused facility these days), find (OT can someone explain to me why find on FreeBSD is *so* slow), etc etc. - Perl ..*sigh*.. Perl is devil spawn, but is as inevitable as the weather. It is a syntactic, semantic witches cauldron. Unfortunately some familiarity with it generally advisable. It does run everywhere, but don't be fooled into thinking that it survives change well, new versions do break old scripts sometimes. The book "Programming Perl" is not the book to learn it from, it is as eccentrically written as the language itself. Perl is the ultimate contradiction of the Unix tool philosophy.. but let's not get into that :) - I see some recommendations for Python, I have heard many good things about it as well, it sits high on my list of things to look at. -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message