Re: BEGIN, INIT etc...

On 2008-03-27 18:36, pgodfrin wrote:
> So how prevalent is Perl in the commercial world? Do people actually
> have full-time jobs writing perl modules?

Yes.

> Do people use perl to write software like Microsoft Office

I doubt it.

> or Quest Software's Toad? Or perhaps BMC Patrol or CA Univision?

These three are probably closer. (In fact I've been considering to write
"something like Toad" in Perl - it could save me a lot of time, but
unfortunately I first need to find the time to write it).

I doubt you'll find much "shrink-wrapped" software written in perl -
companies which sell shrink-wrapped software don't like to give away
their source code (the customer might see how grotty it is :-)).

> What is it mostly used for?

Lots of "backoffice" stuff: Converting data, producing reports, printing
bills. Anything which has to gather and mangle lots of data from files
or databases.
Tools: Everything you need "in-house" to make some job easier and which
you can't buy off the shelf.
Web-Applications: From small cgi scripts to really large applications.
Analysis: From Server-Logs to the human genome.

hp