ptalk > Whine before Perl

Whine before Perl

I needed to write a couple of simple scripts the other day. One to create a p4 change template that followed our guidelines; another to format review email from that change template.

Every time I write something like this, I start off with sed, because it is so simple, then I realize it is too simple, and I try to remember awk, but then realize if I am going to use awk, I might as well use perl. I know perl is the best (in the sense of worse is better!) tool for tasks like this, but it is so grotty that I refuse to learn it and it always takes me an hour of flipping through the perl manual to remember its bizarre syntax.

Some day someone ought to design a clean version of perl where there is only one way to do things.