Perl Programming in 2024 | Still a Useful Language?

Hello all, welcome to another Programming video, today we are talking about PERL!

Holy smokes I bet you haven't seen a perl video in your feed lately, Stick around and learn about what this language can do for you.

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[jasonchesshir]

Everyone is sleeping on Perl. Code quality is dependent on the writer, not the language. Glad to see some Perl content in 2024.

[felipevaldes]

This video discusses the relevance of the Perl programming language in 2024. The key points are:

Perl is a legacy language that was ahead of its time when it was created in 1987, offering better syntax and functionality than bash scripting.
While Perl has no strict types, it has three semi-types: scalars, arrays, and hashes, making it a mix between an object-oriented and scripting language.
Python is considered the modern version of Perl, with similar features like dynamic typing and scripting capabilities.
Perl's strength lies in text processing, regex operations, and acting as a glue between external applications, parsing their output, and performing automated tasks.
The video demonstrates how Perl can be used to call system commands like dmesg and parse their output using regex expressions.
Perl is compatible with C libraries and can load and run C code within Perl scripts.
While Perl has an active community and package management system (CPAN), some packages are outdated and may require modifications.
The video suggests that Perl's primary use case in 2024 is for text processing, parsing command outputs, and automating tasks involving external applications, leveraging its regex capabilities and compatibility with C libraries.

[groff]

If I remember correctly Perl and it's numerous published books defined the standard for regular expressions. It's text processing capabilities is so legendary that it literally set the tone for writing Regex.

[carmacarmody]

Perl is the absolute best language to do things quickly if you know what you are doing. I will use it over python any day of the week for quick simple script stuff.

[chmod]

Perl is dope. Check out perl format directives, a built-in DSL that's kind of like a templating language.

[MeriaDuck]

One of the problems I have with perl is the number of things that are implicitly happening.
And accidentally using a list in scalar context doesn't break, it implies you want the length.
So a function created for numbers would do _something_ when receiving a list, and vice versa. That something would hardly ever be what you wanted.

It was one of the firs languages that had a central repository of libraries.

[vadoksam]

Love Perl content, its such a great language !

[rnts]

Back in the day perl was THE thing for system administration, backups, log rolls, stats, and glue as you mentioned. It is still king for large amounts of raw data and text. It allows you to do things that you sometimes shouldn't. When bash, awk, (e)grep and sed becomes pipe-hell perl is there.

[anilraghu]

Perl is best language to deal with large amounts of text like DNA sequence and manipulate HTML code.

[timhowe]

Perl is a great way to get things done. It's really fun to use.

[anilraghu]

CGI Perl is the best backend tool. It processes the code most naturally.

[muyvin]

perl is very practical, people like to bash on other languages without fully trying it.

[benhuangbmj]

How often do you use Perl? For job or for side projects?

[wilsonfreitas]

Perl is useful if you want to make sure nobody can read your code. Not even yourself.

[eadwacer]

Why the "my" on variables at the highest scope?