FAQ 1.10 Can I do [task] in Perl?

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1.10: Can I do [task] in Perl?

Perl is flexible and extensible enough for you to use on virtually any
task, from one-line file-processing tasks to large, elaborate systems.
For many people, Perl serves as a great replacement for shell scripting.
For others, it serves as a convenient, high-level replacement for most
of what they'd program in low-level languages like C or C++. It's
ultimately up to you (and possibly your management) which tasks you'll
use Perl for and which you won't.

If you have a library that provides an API, you can make any component
of it available as just another Perl function or variable using a Perl
extension written in C or C++ and dynamically linked into your main perl
interpreter. You can also go the other direction, and write your main
program in C or C++, and then link in some Perl code on the fly, to
create a powerful application. See perlembed.

That said, there will always be small, focused, special-purpose
languages dedicated to a specific problem domain that are simply more
convenient for certain kinds of problems. Perl tries to be all things to
all people, but nothing special to anyone. Examples of specialized
languages that come to mind include prolog and matlab.



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