[REBOL] Re: Perl is to stupid to understand this 1 liner.
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 13-Dec-2001 18:15
Hi, Doug,
Vos, Doug
wrote:
...
> try this at the prompt. - Test for leap year
> >> 29-Feb-1999
> ** Syntax Error: Invalid date -- 29-Feb-1999
> ** Near: (line 1) 29-Feb-1999
>
> However there is a leap year in 2000,
> so rebol knows right away what you mean...
>
> >> 29-Feb-2000
> == 29-Feb-2000
>
> >> Can perl do that?
> == NO
>
I respectfully suggest that you do NOT want to open that door.
The only valid way I know of to use "one-liners" in comparing
languages would be to consider:
1) The range of one-liners in language A and language B.
2) The actual utility of EACH such one-liner in each language.
3) The effort required to learn them.
Items 1 and 2 give the credit side of the ledger, while item 3
is the debit side. Net ROI (return-on-investment) is the balance
between the two. Note that item 2 includes both "How often would
I use this one-liner?" and "Would learning this one-liner prepare
me to create other useful one-liners?"
One-liners often encourage (or at least demonstrate) techniques
which may not have wide application, and may be more biased to
compactness than readability and reusability. That's not always
bad, but it means that one-liners may have little to do with the
way a professional programmer will write significant pieces of
code in the language in question.
Feature count is by no means the only (nor most useful) measure of
a language; if it were, REBOL would come out on the short end of
*many* comparisons. REBOL is a flexible and compact scripting
language designed primarily for "programming in the small" (according
to a quotation from Carl Sassenrath in the document "shoebox" on the
REBOL Forces site). However, that compactness comes with a price:
limits on features. REBOL is also far from the highest in brute
performance of the scripting languages of my acquaintance.
Perl, on the other hand, is a mature, high-performance language with
an incredibly rich feature set and even richer standard library of
additional components. However, that richness comes with a price:
the installation of Perl 5.6 on the Solaris box I'm using today
weighs in at about 15 Mb.
It is certainly legitimate to show a piece of code that does a
specific thing that one finds useful and cite that as a benefit
of the language. I do not think it is fair to take one such
example and claim that another language that takes more keystrokes
for the same result is "stupid". By that measure, almost every
language (including REBOL) is "stupid" compared with APL.
I might add that I recently attended a meeting which included a
presentation on Python; the presenter concluded with a single
Python expression which, when evaluated, created an ASCII-art
image of the Mandelbrot Set. Although the expression was long
enough to line-wrap (multiple times! ;-) it was still far more
compact than one would reasonably expect, and *way* far more
compact than one could write in REBOL.
I am neither advocating for nor against Perl or REBOL here; my
oft-stated view is that languages are tools, each with specific
capabilities and strengths (and weaknesses). I have no time for
arguments regarding whether a handsaw is "better" or "worse" than
a screwdriver.
That said, I can play parlor games too! (To avoid appearing to
contradict myself, let me point out that I don't take this exercise
at all seriously...)
SUPPOSE that I have a memo containing phone numbers. I need to give
someone a copy of the memo, but need to blot out the phone numbers,
in the best CIA tradition. ;-) Here's the memo:
8<----------
Ms. Antoinette,
I spoke with George Washington at 555-1212 about our pending
contract. He referred me to Ben Franklin (800-555-1111) of
their technical support department. Ben said that they were
testing their latest release on WhizBangOS version 17.3 as
we had requested, and that he would have our answer tomorrow.
Ben also said that their lead developer, Betsy Ross, would
like to talk to you about the use of complex numbers in the
SystemSleepFor function. You may call her office at
123-4576, her cell phone at 987-6543, or page her at 111-1111.
She is very eager to describe this new feature.
Sincerely,
Thomas Paine
8<----------
I can protect everybody's phone numbers from lurking telemarketers
with the following one-liner in Perl:
8<----------
# perl -p -e 's/\b(\d{3}-)?\d{3}-\d{4}/####/g' memo.txt
Ms. Antoinette,
I spoke with George Washington at #### about our pending
contract. He referred me to Ben Franklin (####) of
their technical support department. Ben said that they were
testing their latest release on WhizBangOS version 17.3 as
we had requested, and that he would have our answer tomorrow.
Ben also said that their lead developer, Betsy Ross, would
like to talk to you about the use of complex numbers in the
SystemSleepFor function. You may call her office at
####, her cell phone at ####, or page her at ####.
She is very eager to describe this new feature.
Sincerely,
Thomas Paine
8<----------
Anyone is welcome to propose a minimalist solution in REBOL!
-jn-
