Re: What do you use Perl for and Why?

[pinetree]

I guess I fall into the first category - those who use Perl for most things. While not 100% of my coding is in Perl, Perl is usually my first choice language.

What my Perl does at work:

• Send email (I built an email engine for our outbound marketing email with a rough speed of 40-50,000 personalized emails/hour. The average size list that's sent right now is anywhere from 100,000 - 450,000 addresses.
• Build lists of email addresses for mailings from our customer database. I have a number of list building scripts that do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to building outbound email lists:
  * build lists based on SQL query
  * build a list of x random users based on a SQL query
  * create an A/B split of a list
  * split one list based on another
• Create XML feeds for partners
• Handle incoming data feeds
• Provide web-based self service tools for other departments

I'm sure there are other scripts I've missed but these are the ones I work with the most.

Oren

[tilly]

Did you really want to admit to being a spammer in public?

UPDATE: It is possible that I am being premature. Certainly there are many legitimate reasons to send lots of email, and I have done so myself.

However my presumption definitely was that someone whose job entails little but sending impressive amounts of "personalized bulk mail" is likely to be engaging in spam. As a project or three among many others, that makes sense. But little but?

I wonder what other people's experience is?

[dws]

Did you really want to admit to being a spammer in public?

I think that applying the "spammer" label is a bit premature. There are plenty of business that have large customer bases that they contact via email. Somebody needs to turn the crank. A friend has a completely legitimate job that sounds very much like what pinetree describes, minus Perl.

[Qiang]

these days people just get sensitive about "sending marking
email 50000/h" kinds words. at the begining, i was
thinking about 'hmm, spammmm ? ' ;-O