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From: mrg@mame.mu.OZ.AU (matthew green)
Subject: Re: GNU Extension Language Plans
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Date: Wed, 26 Oct 1994 23:03:48 GMT
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fjh@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) writes:

   peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
   
   >(no, I don't think Perl's COBOL.
   
   Perl _is_ COBOL, not because of its verbosity, but because of the
   large number of builtin commands *each with its own peculiar syntax*.

if you look at perl 5, you'll see the number of reserved words
dropped by 2/3rds, and the "rules" for pretty much all of them
have been standardised.  

perl 5 can *look* like cobol when you do

use English;

and use the *long* names (like $INPUT_FIELD_SEPARATOR)
   
   (Saying "Perl is COBOL" is a bit too strong, but you know what I mean.)

bit?  perl is the combination of a myriad of languages.  it
is just wrong to say "perl is blah" in any sense.

.mrg.
