Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 01/18/08 16:03

Gary L. Burnore wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:16:06 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c>
> wrote:
>
>> Toby A Inkster wrote:
>>> Steve wrote:
>>>
>>>> can you switch, in code, mid-stream to from one language to another?
>>> In PHP? Yes, kinda, if you install the right modules. But only if by "one
>>> language" you mean "PHP" and "another" you mean "Perl or Python".
>>>
>>> An example of using Perl within PHP:
>>>
>>> <?php
>>> // Use embedded Perl
>>> $perl = new Perl();
>>> // Import function "md5_hex" from package "Digest::MD5"
>>> $perl->eval('use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);');
>>> // Now we can call the function as a normal PHP object method.
>>> echo $perl->md5_hex('Hello');
>>> // prints "8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7".
>>> ?>
>>>
>>> It's slightly clunky in terms of syntax, but it's pretty cool and
>>> occasionally useful if you want to be able to reuse a large piece of
>>> already written Perl script in PHP. Perl functions can be made accessible
>>> to PHP, and variables, arrays, hashes and objects passed back and forth
>>> between the languages.
>> <shudder>teh thought of having PERL anywhere on my machine</shudder>
>
> why?
I had an employee, who was the only one I had to actually fire..set him
a project, did it in perl, ran slower than almost anything else, and
after 6 months still didn't work. Found out he had being writing a
collaborative science fiction book online most of the time.

Another guy picked it up, had it done in bash in 10 days, at about 1/4
the length, and ten times the comprehensibility, tho still a wee bit slow.

So we looked at the worst bits and did them in C.

I suppose that it was that instance that cemented in my mind the firm
conviction that anyone who thinks PERL is great, is probably a total
wanker, and that includes the guy who wrote it. ;-)

Sadly it does exist on my system because some bloody class library
installation script was written in it.

[Back to original message]