[ On Saturday, July 22, 2000 at 00:36:52 (+0200), Marc Espie wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Suggestion: inclusion of the truncate(1) utility into the tree
>
> Next time you're bored, time NetBSD makewhatis (you know, the one in C).
> Now, compare it to OpenBSD's version (you know the one in perl).
> 
> Now guess which one is faster.

Guess which one can be faster if both are optimised to their limits.....

> As far as awk and sh go, yeah, sure. Those tools exist. Perl is simpler,
> easier to maintain, generally faster, simpler to get secure, to debug, etc.

I think *NOT*!  (Well maybe not so easy to debug as perl....)

> (also, perl is usually more portable than your random assortment of `standard'
> shell tools... being involved with maintaining a few supposedly `standard'
> tools, I know...)

once again, not really.....  (so long as you actually pay attention to
"The Single Unix Standard")

> Your choice, really... You can live in the '80s if you wish to.

Well if you want an integrated, interpreted, language useful for
system-level hacking, and you want to get out of the 1980's (there's
never been a more 80s tool than Perl!), then you might look at Python,
or Pike, or ICI, or even Guile.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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