Perl before C, except after Python.... - Tech Support Forums

couch potato · October 29th, 2002, 01:38 AM

im starting to learn C, and i was thinking about learning perl, too. What kind of things are best programmed with Perl? should I learn Perl before c?Im a newbie

jkrohn · October 29th, 2002, 01:40 AM

No you shouldn't learn Perl before C.

Perl was invented so sysadmins can think taht they can program

While Perl is useful it isn't really that much eaiser than C, and learning it first will offer you little.

the languages themselves are very similar though.

Jkrohn

gothic · October 29th, 2002, 04:15 PM

Not much easier? PERL is a heck of a lot easier than C.

I use both everyday, but I guess I just like to think I can program.. =]

*Edit* I can't leave well enough alone.

It's kind of silly to compare C and PERL when you think about it.

PERL is a scripting language, C is a programming language.
They can be used for similiar purposes, but that really depends on what you are doing. For example, you aren't going to see Quake17 in PERL.. =]

PERL is perfect for text modification. Quoted from "The Man":

"A high-level interpreted programming language widely used for a variety of tasks and especially for applications running on the World Wide Web."

While C can also be used for CGI purposes, it's generally geared towards higher-performance CGI/Apps.

This may come out wrong, but I'd like to think of PERL being a dumbed-down language. While it's not *actually* dumbed-down, you don't need to write a lot of code to do very simple tasks.

Bah, that's good enough.. =]

fosin · October 29th, 2002, 04:21 PM

You should be able to get by with just C. You can download libraries that allow you to compile cgi programs. Harder than perl but easier than learning 2 languages

.

Ruler2112 · October 29th, 2002, 04:30 PM

I'd go with C, for the simple fact that you're going to learn about data types and get very used to matching them up. If you don't, you'll most likely get a compiler error. Perl has a much less ridgid type-casting structure and the script will just malfunction if you mis-match the types.

jkrohn · October 30th, 2002, 01:12 PM

Quote:

It's kind of silly to compare C and PERL when you think about it.

Comparing somethign like syntax it is not. Most basic statements from them are very similar. Knowledge in one makes learning the other much more simple.

As for their application obviously Perl is not C. Perl is quite slow and resource intensive compared to C and used only in small simple tasks, or when someone jsut plain doesn't know a better language.

Jkrohn

couch potato · October 30th, 2002, 09:23 PM

Okay, thanks