I have always been given to understand that a Pattern boils down to a common solution to a common problem.

Perl is used to solve more *common* problems in double quick time than other languages due to its chainsaw nature and due to the fact that someone (somewhere) has solved this before and usually realeased to CPAN.

This collective *laziness* is yet to hit languages like Java and C++ who (in my opinion only) are still relatively stuck in the classical era of programming. Thus if something makes someone elses life easier, release it commercially and make a buck out of it. But then again those languages don't evolve in the way that Perl does.

I think that is the core strength of Perl. Its language evolution, support and growth is determined on the front lines.

As to centralising this into the language core, I personally feel this would break the flexibility of Perl. Modules already come with the core and installing new ones is (generally) a breeze. Compare this with something like Java where you have to wait for the next release of the language before the core libraries are fixed/updated.

I'll stick with the Perl way thanks.

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