Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually)

[Steven W. Orr]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 pll at lanminds.com wrote:

=>
=>In a message dated: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 15:16:58 CDT
=>Thomas Charron said:
=>
=>For example, in shell, the construct:
=>
=>	cd /tmp && rm foo

Whotchoo talkin 'bout Willis?

cd == chdir is a builtin command. But point taken.

=>
=>creates 2 sub-shell processes, whereas, in perl:
=>
=>	chdir (/tmp) && unlink(foo);
=>
=>creates 0 sub-shell processes.  Therefore, perl is, technically, more 
=>efficient in this regard.  Does it really matter with todays 
=>ridiculously overpowered CPUs and gobs of memory?  Probably not in 
=>most cases.
=>
=>Though, perl does have a debugger one can use vs. bash which doesn't.
=>That right there is a plus in the perl column for me! :)
Actually, debugging bash isn't all that bad. 

set -x 

will solve lots of problems and if that doesn't get you going, then

set -xv

will probably do the rest of it. Another great debugging technique is to 
set 

PS4='.+${0##*/} line $LINENO: '


Also, while bash is arguably the best *login* shell, the best shell 
scripting language (aside from perl, but I don't consider that to be a 
scripting language in the first place) is ksh. And, BTW, the real ksh93 is 
available for free in rpm format, no less. And there is a full blown 
debugger available for ksh with breakpoints and everything. :-)

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