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Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 06:27:16 -0500
From: Peter da Silva <peter@bonkers.taronga.com>
Message-Id: <199508211127.GAA08551@bonkers.taronga.com>
To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Subject: Re: Any reason we can't enable the bus mouse by default?
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In-Reply-To: <199508210216.LAA22114@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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>Perl, OTOH, is slow and bloated, and its syntax is merely incomprehensible.

I would not call Perl slow. It's quite a snappy little language. The problem
here is that in Perl you would have to create a new extension language and
parse it, or have the config file itself be a Perl script. That would have
all the problems of the m4 solution, plus be an even more confusing environment
for the user.

OTOH, the config file is already a Tcl script. As are a good many config
files out there (I just wrote a program that parses information out of an
AMANDA config file by defining some procs and sourcing it, for example).

Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to blast Perl. I just want to
avoid another double-layer-of-weeds mess like sendmail. Tcl is a great tool
for getting rid of weeds.

Anyone who thinks they REALLY understand the sendmail.cf mess and wants to
help me with a sendmail problem, drop me a line. I've been putting it off
for some time because the .mc builder files are just SO badly documented
I'd have to grovel through the source to figure out exactly what's I need
to do here...