Talk:Perl/Archive 1

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Archive 5

Leaking

I removed this: "It is not possible, within the language, to leak memory, crash the interpreter, or corrupt its internal data representation." As much as I love Perl, It's not true.

Perl is reference counting. It leaks memory whenever you create a circular reference.

As for the claims about "Crashing the interpreter, or corrupt its interla data representation", I think you're on very weak ground. It strikes me as hubris (and false hubris at that.) --Mark Fowler, http://2shortplanks.com/contact/ 2005-07-18

Book Reviews

I just removed a link to http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/perlr.htm as the page it links to is a) very out of date, b) rather badly written and c) extremely critical of Perl. I've replaced it with a link to http://books.perl.org/ --Davorg 14:30, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The link to http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/perlr.htm has returned, this time under a ===criticism=== sub-heading. However, the page has many problems:

• The page is badly written. Partly, this is because english is not the author's native language. If this were a page on Wikipedia, we could bring the text up to standard, but it is an external page, so we can't.
• The author clearly doesn't like Perl, but he doesn't say why, or support his position with argument, evidence, or references.
• The author uses invective freely against people and things that he doesn't like. This is neither useful nor informative.
• There are a half-dozen capsule reviews of Perl books, with pictures of the covers. This might be worth linking to; however, on personal knowledge I dispute some of the assertions in the reviews. Again, since this is an external page, we don't have any mechanism for vetting or correcting its content.
• There are links to 4 "essays" on the same site. Like the main page, they are marked by strong opinion, insults, and an almost complete lack of argument or evidence.
• There are links to a half-dozen outside pages. Some are on perl.com, which is already linked from the Wikipedia Perl page. Others are of only tangential relevance to Perl.

I'm all for giving the reader links to relevant material, but I don't think a link to this page should remain, even marked as "criticism". --Swmcd 20:51, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

I agree. There is some insight on the page, but it takes too much work on the part of the reader to extract it. Or to put it another way, the page sucks :-) --Yath 23:22, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I vote for just removing it again. --Davorg 09:44, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I came to the discussion page here intending to make the very same point (that the link to Xah Lee's perl critique should be removed). Even as criticism, its information content is really low. I'm going ahead and removing it again. Oh, except someone already did. Yay. --John Callender 17:46, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Xah Lee, would-be perl critic?

But, seriously: this a series of editorial statements made about the state of perl, the perl community, and perl literature in 1999. There are a bunch of literally marginal polemical remarks made with at best anecdotal evidence cited in support. This is not criticism of perl; this is a bunch of from-the-hip editorial statements made about perl programmers without any supporting analysis. Perhaps the link has a point; in practise, it does not bother establishing any by rational argument. There is accordingly no reason to credit this as "criticism". In any case: who's going to accept book reviews that plainly state, "This appears to be a good book, but i haven't read it"? Perhaps perl needs critics; this article isn't where it is. If information on user pages is correct, author is linkspamming self, despite advice on talk page not to do so. --Buffyg 02:43, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Look perl fanatical morons: I don't have time to fight this and with the pettiness of perlers. This perl article is full of fanatical fucks (even the Java article is more fair). Unless one remove the fanatical proselytization in this article, or, add some link to real serious criticisms (there are quite a few, btw), I will just come in now and than to fix it by inserting criticism of my own. I'm sorry that it is my own page (and a non-commericial one with lots of external resources inluding few from perl.com), but I just happen to be the primary critic of Perl and its community of ignoramuses. Pardon my French. --Xah Lee 04:07, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

If you care to contribute criticim on the subject, please insert your criticism here under wikipedia process. Please cease and desist from posting links to your web site or making garbage edits. --Buffyg 16:02, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Did you know that cease and desist is a chantable phreasology? Yes it is. Please see http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/chantable_phraseology.html --Xah Lee 03:35, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

I marvel at how much this ad hominem (or should that be ad verbum? :) attack adds to this discussion. --Maru (talk) Contribs 22:52, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

See previous discussion of this issue under the #Book_Reviews subhead. --Swmcd 05:54, 2005 July 17 (UTC)

Inserting an external link to your own work is considered self-promotion. Besides, please learn some manners. Then people might start taking you seriously. --Oleg Alexandrov 16:24, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Perl programming language?

Why is this at Perl programming language? Is there any reason for the disambiguation? Perl is just a redirect. --Eloquence 14:02 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

For consistency in naming. It was decided some time ago that human languages would be suffixed "language" and computer languages would be suffixed "programming language". It's got nothing to do with disambiguation. If you are going to move all these computer language pages, make sure that you check the What links here for double redirects which you may have introduced and fix them --Derek Ross 16:30 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I found out by now. We have changed this policy, also for languages (e.g. Sanskrit). Don't worry about double redirs, I will take care of those. --Eloquence 16:33 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the term "programming language". However, I've noticed lots of [older] references to this class of language which call them "computer languages". I don't really agree with the latter term, since they are really just human languages used to program computers. A minor point. As to appending "programming language" to the official titles, I think that's a good idea... the single example of Java vs. Java should suffice to convince most people. 2 cents. --Patrick Corcoran

Java is a case of disambiguation, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Perl is not. --Eloquence 16:46 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, great. The naming policy changed and I never even saw the discussion, never mind took part in it. For the record I don't agree with the change and I find it annoying that it took place without any of my input. --Derek Ross 16:42 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

See the interlanguage links on Perl. Everyone else is doing the right thing already. --Eloquence 16:46 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Regular Expressions with Perl Examples

"===Regular Expressions with Perl Examples===" is used in a novel way in this article. I'd have reserved that markup for section headings. --Bevo 03:20, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Logo suggestion

perl.com logo

<div style="float:right;width:97px;text-align:center">
[[Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg|Programming Republic Of Perl]]
<br>
<small>
[http://www.perl.com perl.com logo]
</small>
</div>

Would the <div> code above be acceptable as an alternative to the bare image link, given the copyright restriction on the image (which I have expressed concerns about on the image talk page)?

No need for explicit DIV, just use the WikiImage code (as I have done). HTH HAND. --Phil | Talk 13:24, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I was trying to avoid the frame, but I guess that's in keeping with the rest of the 'pedia. In fact, I think it's better to have the frame, as it makes it clear that we are not using it as an approval stamp. --PhilHibbs 13:35, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Propagandistic errors

I think there are many propagandistic errors in this article. Here's one example. quote:

"...Any syntax errors are caught during the compile stage instead of later during execution."

That's kinda ridiculous or meaningless to claim without specifying exactly what is meant by "any". Quote: "Subroutine calls can be placed in the file before the subroutines themselves are defined." This is not true always. --Xah Lee 22:37, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

I disagree. Any error that isn't picked up at the compile stage isn't a syntax error. Care to give a counter-example? --Davorg 10:45, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem isn't that it's false, but that it isn't notable. Syntax errors are generally caught during the compile stage of any language, so to note this as a feature of perl is strange. It's even stranger still when you consider that the "eval" function can make it false for perl. --Yath 19:56, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's notable because many of the languages Perl derives from (like shell scripts) interpret their programs line-by-line. Since they don't have a formal parse phase, a syntax error halfway through your script will leave the task half-finished. —Brent Dax 02:16, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But those languages don't have a compile phase. I found that part of the article to be strange for the same reason that Yath did. --Dominus 13:53, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Quote: “Subroutine calls can be placed in the file before the subroutines themselves are defined.”

this is not true always."

Again, care to give an example? --Davorg 10:45, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 use File::Find qw(find);
 $mydir= '/Users/t/web/SpecialPlaneCurves_dir';
 find(\&wanted, $mydir);
 sub g($){print shift, "\n";}
 sub wanted {
     if ($_ =~/\.html$/ && -T $File::Find::name) { g $File::Find::name;}
     $File::Find::name;
 }

http://xahlee.org/perl-python/traverse_dir.html --Xah Lee 10:00, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Of course, all you need to do to fix that it to put parentheses around the arguments to 'g'. So it's hardly a compelling argument.

      #!/usr/bin/perl
      use File::Find;
      $mydir= '.';
      find(\&wanted, $mydir);
      sub wanted {
           g($File::Find::name) if /\.html$/ && -T $File::Find::name;
         $File::Find::name;
      }
      sub g($) {print shift, "\n";}

--Davorg 16:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Web hosting advertisements

I am removing a link to a list of Web hosting advertisements ("Webmaster.org: Perl Web Hosting Plans- List of companies offering perl in their web hosting plans.") added to External links by 69.158.155.131 whose every single edit was adding links to similar lists in other articles. --Rafał Pocztarski 09:41, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Obfuscation example

That's a really, really weak example of obfuscation given, especially after just mentioning the annual obfuscation contest. Either give a real example, or don't give an example at all.

I assume that this pathetic example (which actually serves to confuse rather than enlighten) was included because all the good ones are of course copyright their authors and hence incompatible with Wikipedia. On the other hand, I'm sure at least some of those authors would be willing to GFDL their Obfuscated Perl entries for Wikipedia. I have one in mind; I may go and ask the author. --Pete

[Time Passes] I've asked for and got permission to use the example I was thinking of. I'll include the text here so that in future people will know it was used with permission.

> for your program to be included in an article you would  
> need to license it under the Gnu Free Documentation License, a  
> suitable Creative Commons license, or similar.

I am happy to license it to you under either or both of those licenses.

[ --Mark Jason Dominus]

Your effort is appreciated. --Sundar (talk · contributions) 03:43, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again for your interest in my program. I hereby confirm that I have granted permission for my program to be distributed under the terms of the GFDL or a Wikipedia-suitable Creative Commons license. --Dominus 5 July 2005 14:23 (UTC)

History

Perl was invented in 1986 by Larry Wall. --Anon

Copyedits

1.2 Applications says

   Systems administrators use Perl as an all-purpose tool

Generic Player qualified this to

   Many systems administrators use Perl as an all-purpose tool

on the grounds that not all systems administrators use Perl. I took "Many" back out. Unqualified, "systems administrators" doesn't mean "all systems administrators", it refers to systems administrators as a group, and asserts that use of Perl is observed among that group. Adding the qualifier "many" actually asserts knowledge of the prevalence of Perl use among systems administrators, and we shouldn't do that unless we have evidence to support the assertion.

TOCleft and indented paragraphs

The second and third paragraphs of the Overview section are quoted from perlintro(1). They used to be indented with the blockquote markup; a little while ago someone changed the blockquote to colon (:).

However, neither blockquote nor colon works with TOCleft: the paragraphs are not indented. As a result, the reader can't tell how much text is being quoted from perlintro(1).

Wiki renders blockquote/colon as

<dl><dd>your quote here</dd></dl>

The problem manifests in both IE and Firefox, so it probably needs to be regarded as a bug in the Wiki software. We need to do something about this, but I don't know what. --Swmcd 12:28, 2005 August 7 (UTC)

This is a well-known problem of CSS, not a bug of mediawiki, FF or IE. What happens is that float boxes (the TOC in this case) don't push aside block-level boxes that are next to them (the dd/dl in this case), but only the inline-boxes (the text) inside them. The dd and dl boxes (and any margins they have) still extend all the way to the left edge of the content area, going "behind" the floating TOC. The same problem occurs if you put bullet lists beside a float, the bullets will often disappear behind the floating box.

This is the behaviour the CSS standard mandates, and there aren't workarounds for it that are really satisfactory. If it's important to make clear what part of that paragraph is quoted, it will have to be italicized or something like that. --K. Sperling (talk) 13:46, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Perl 6

Since Perl 6 is now quite well-advanced as both a language definition and implementation, with both Parrot and PUGS based implementations, I think that Perl 6 should be mentioned prominently near the top of the article. Perl 6 is likely to transform the language and widen its application (or destroy its chances, depending on your viewpoint!) so it deserves more coverage and linking to Perl 6. I suggest a short mention linking to Perl 6 in Language Features and a similar mention linking to Perl 6, Parrot virtual machine and PUGS in Implementation. --Richard Donkin 11:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Section ordering

In most articles in wikipedia, History is one of the first sections, not one of the last. --Anon

Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister

This page needs history pages, it's quite long now. --Anon.

{{sofixit}}... Ah, never mind, I'll do it myself. --Maru (talk) Contribs 20:27, 12 November 2005 (UTC)