I have never seen C being described as "looking nice" before, however, having been programming in C a lot longer than I've programmed in Perl (13 yrs v 4 yrs) I can see advantages in both.

C is good if you have a lot of data to be moved around (eg graphics) and your need the speed of a compiled language. Perl is good for extracting/analysing information in text files or for quick programming jobs where running time isn't critical.

It really is a matter of choosing the right tool for the job (IMHO).

M

i could kinda use not doing $ sometimes..

*cough* :)

How does perl compare to c, some basic thoughts.

Take a look at the Shootout.

I think about it often, although I'm not much of a C programmer, I understand the basics. To me, Perl is an easy-to-use front-end to C. The most common big problems I encounter when doing a C program,are:

declaring the variable type, which are not intuitive, and worrying about overflows, and casting.

buffer overflows

lack of a linked list structure type (i.e. Perl's hash )

Perl modules are much easier to use than figuring out how to incorporate a C lib into your app. Static vs. Dynamic linking, etc.

Perl handles all of these for you, at the expense of speed. So as others have said, if you need speed, or are moving alot of data, C is better. But almost anything you can write in C, can be done in Perl, and it can be written faster. So write in Perl, and if you need speed, convert it to C.

There's no reason to chose one or the other when they go together so well: Inline::C.

-sam

I think your question depends largely on what you need to do with your program. C is great for times when you need to be close to the bare metal, but it's difficult to use and can get you into a world of trouble fairly easily. Pointers can be fun and powerful, but they really give you a whole lot of rope with which to hang yourself. You should see my poor neck ;-)

To my understanding, C would be faster to run for most uses. It compiles to machine code, as opposed to Perl compiling to byte code. This won't matter if you're waiting for a keypress, but in graphics and heavy math, the difference may be crucial.

The thing is, it takes much longer to develop working code in C. Imagine what is involved in creating, filling, and sorting a hash. A competent Perl programmer could knock it out in a few minutes. A Perl wizard could probably write a one-liner. A good C programmer would probably need an hour or more to accomplish the same thing.

In general, I'd use Perl for just about everything, because it is so easy to use (and fun). And because if I get stuck, I can always come here to Perl Monks and get an answer within minutes (usually). If I were trying to do something with heavy graphics use, hairy math (matrices, for example), any sort of time-consuming stuff, and if there were going to be large iterations of things, I'd probably bite the bullet and write at least those parts in C. So far, I haven't found anything that has required me to do this. Perl has worked just fine for everything I've needed, even digesting megabytes of text and spewing it out all neatly organized. I'm glad C is available, "just in case", but I hope I'll never need it.

I could kinda use being allowed to do $ in other languages, especially if I could do $ even in string literals.

I'm probably not the right person, but ... I dislike C, I dislike it a lot. And the thing I dislike most are the aroundfix types. or even "(" , ... ")" ? Function returing a pointer to int versus a pointer to a function returning int, anyone?

Besides, while programming, do you think "and now I'm gonna need an integer, let's call it counter" => int counter; or rather "and now I'm gonna need a counter, it could be an int" => var counter : int;

Plus it's dated, simplistic "type system" that you have to circumvent all the time to get anything done .. not thanks C's not for me, thank you very much.

Jenda

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