Re: help needed badly parsing ASN.1 data

[EdwardG]

in reply to help needed badly parsing ASN.1 data

I'm sorry, I can't help you with your project. I do have one small observation though,

I am unable to come up with an algorithm for the same as i am very new to Perl programming.

Algorithms are language independent.

In other words, your lack of Perl knowledge shouldn't stop you coming up with a solution, even if you cannot personally translate that solution into a Perl program.

Sometimes, knowing the idioms of a particular language can help, but equally, that knowledge can hinder.

[blazar]

Algorithms are language independent.

That's perfectly true. But I also second Alan Perlis' claim that

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

This is perhaps not terribly relevant here, but does constitute IMHO the starting point for an interesting meditation, the point being that although algorithms exist abstractly we're constantly concerned in their practical realization in some language or another and when doing so we're not interested in issues about e.g. the fact the algorithm is realizable in practice, some way or another, but specifically about how easy or difficult the particular language of choice will make doing so. Incidentally, this also pairs with my convincement that artistic creation (with which programming has an unremovable link, still IMHO) has not only to do with the abstract "idea", and that the medium on which it is to be made actual is more than a dumb substrate on which it is to be so to say, "transferred"; specifically, that the former has much to do with the struggle between the artist and the substrate itself, with its own charachteristics, be it some sort of material, a given format, or a programming language.

End of free flow of thought! ;-)