Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:07:27 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org (Jonathon McKitrick) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Choosing between sh and perl for system scripts Message-ID: <200402101807.i1AI7R407407@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <20040210180252.GC48583@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> from "Jonathon McKitrick" at Feb 10, 2004 06:02:52 PM
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> > On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 11:48:48AM -0500, Jerry McAllister wrote: > : > > : > > : > Now that I have a desktop workstation and network, I'm trying to learn the > : > true admin side of BSD, such as the periodic tasks, and how to automate > : > things. I see perl all over the system, and I know it's powerful and easy > : > to use. What might help me decide which tool would be best for the scripts > : > I want to write? > : > : Probably the two main things to consider are what type of processing > : you will be doing and how much it will be used. > : > : Perl is great for text processing - grabbing things out of text > : streams, mashing it around, creating easily searched and manipulated > : tables of that sort of stuff. It is not really so good at anything > : that needs a lot of floating point number crunching. > > One place I saw it used that piqued my interest was as an aid to maintaining > source code. The book 'The Pragmatic Programmer' talks about perl scripts > being used to mark areas that need attention, extract comments, make reports > on changes, and so on. Well, since that would be a lot of mucking through text files, Perl would probably be a good choice for it. > : Perl is good for scripts that get used now and then. But, it is > : kind of big so if the script is likely to be used a lot - every > : second or so, then you will want to use something leaner. Probably > : either sh or even write it in C. > > For me on my home box, I will probably be using it to run backups, cvsup, > build world, and so on. Hmmm. Could go either way on those. Most of our backup stuff is in either sh because it is not very complicated or C because it needs to run SUID. ////jerry > > jm > -- > My other computer is your Windows box. >
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