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0 pointshedora3y ago0 comments

Most awk/cut/whatever commands can be done with perl -ne in about 2x the keystrokes, but you don't need to learn the other tools.

In Python, the multiplier is much higher, and I could never get the oneliner stuff to work.

0 comments

cutler3y ago

I don't understand why Python is touted as some kind of replacement for Perl when there are many things Perl does better and faster. Python isn't even optimised for one-liners so how can it be compared with Perl?

collyw3y ago

I moved from Perl to Python around 2011, mainly for Django.

Perl is a more expressive, "cleverer" language. But I noticed when I moved to Python that I write better code. Too often in Perl I would try something clever and terse, then two days later it would bite me in the bum and cause more problems than it solved.

I would still pull out Perl for some quick bash replacement type script, regular expressions are so much nicer in Perl, but for larger scale long term projects where maintenance is important, I would go for Python.

biomcgary3y ago

I use cut, grep, uniq, etc. a lot for processing largish files (multiple GB), but also use perl oneliners generously. Never took to awk for some reason. These days I write Go for anything larger than a oneliner, but I've added a lot of smallish Go CLI commands to use in pipes, too.