> > it's not necessary, no, but it *is* becoming rather ubiquitous.
> > freebsd has it, linux has it (of course), and even solaris comes with
> > it now.  solaris 8, that is, which is one weird beast.  while far from
> > necessary for most things, it's probably one of the few things that
> > almost *anyone* will be installing.
>
>What do you mean?  POSIX sh(1), awk(1), and sed(1) are available
>pretty much everywhere, too.  And they're a lot smaller than perl,
>too.

well...since you've asked...this is one of my favorite nits.

netbsd's sh != solaris's sh != linux's sh.

ditto awk.

sed seems (in my limited experience) to be pretty much the same all
around.

but perl 5.004_04 is the same perl 5.004_04 *everywhere*.  the only
thing i have to worry about is if i'm using modules, and since i cut
my perl teeth on perl 4, i don't that many modules.  if i do, they're
usually the ones that came with the distribution.

don't get me wrong...i'm not arguing *for* putting perl in the main
distribution (or in with compilers), but i am saying it seems to make
a fair amount of sense to me.

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