[ Thanks to Frank for
this link. ]
“How the new Perl 5.6 features stack up against C/C++/Java.”
“Ted Zlatanov explains some of the peculiarities in Perl 5.6 for
C and Java programmers, who may actually be pleasantly surprised by
some familiar features hailing from sources other than Perl, like
operator ambiguity, multiple ways of doing the same thing,
punctuation, regular expressions, and variable mechanism. All of
them put variety and power at your fingertips. The point is, Perl
isn’t too far from anyone’s familiar territory and may be useful to
even C and Java programmers at some point. So here’s your
opportunity to enhance your Perl 5.6 skills.”
“Perl often bewilders even experienced programmers, primarily
because it allegedly makes it too easy to write obfuscated code.
But the confusion regarding Perl’s structure, features, and
philosophy is inevitable given that it’s such a rich and powerful
language, and that it was designed from the start to allow for more
than one way to do the same thing.”
“Here we’re going to look at some of the more confusing features
of Perl 5.6, comparing and contrasting them to the corresponding
C/C++/Java features. We’ll concentrate on the principles in Larry
Wall’s paper “Natural Language Principles in Perl” (see the
Resources later in this article), because they distinguish Perl
from C, C++, and Java most readily. The exact mechanics of Perl’s
syntax are better learned from the “perldoc perlsyn” manual page
and from Programming Perl, the best guide to Perl today….”