Re: BEGIN, INIT etc...

On Mar 30, 8:20 am, "Peter J. Holzer" wrote:
> 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

Hi Peter,
Makes sense - all I've ever use Perl for is the same sort of back-
office kind of work. Mostly instead of C or COBOL. In the mainframe
world I used to use SAS a lot, instead of - well - COBOL...

cheers,
pg