Re^2: What's so unique about Perl?

[greenFox]

Perl evolved to solve real world problems

I think this is Perl's strength. I remember reading an article about Perl's design by Larry Wall where he talked about adding shortcuts for the things programmers need to do often. I can't find where I read it originally but these two articles both mention the idea-

"When they first built the University of California at Irvine campus, they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and built the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is that kind of a language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass. Those trails that were there before were the previous computer languages that Perl has borrowed ideas from. And Perl has unashamedly borrowed ideas from many, many different languages. Those paths can go diagonally. We want shortcuts. Sometimes we want to be able to do the orthogonal thing, so Perl generally allows the orthogonal approach also. But it also allows a certain number of shortcuts, and being able to insert those shortcuts is part of that evolutionary thing." -Larry Wall