The only commercial Perl software I know of is a mud written in Perl, written by Thomas Boutell, the same person who wrote the GD library (the C library, not the Perl interface). However, there is commercial software out there of which at least pieces have been written in Perl. Veritas cluster software for instance. Solaris also comes with some tools written in Perl. Some HP Openview programs are written in Perl.

Abigail

-enlil

The list of mod_perl products and application servers includes commercial products.

The core application is typically written in C or C++. Many features are implemented in the scripting language. The scripting language is also documented and delivered to the customer to use for customization.

Customization is good for keeping customers, who's cumulative effort tends to lock them in.

Compiling the underlying application also makes it easier to implement a software licensing scheme.

Examples of CAD tools with this approach are made by Mentor Graphics, Cadence, AutoDesk, and *many* others. Some of the CAD systems use perl, either embedded as the extension language or as an independent executable.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

There are also perlbill and perldesk.

Ciao, Valerio

update: Oops, I forgot to mention Movable Type PRO

As far as your discussion with your co-worker about commercial programs written in scripting languages, I think you need to clarify what you mean by "scripting language". What is a "script" as opposed to an application? What is a scripting language? When you say script, I think of short shell scripts, windows .bat files, or short perl utilities that I've written. While these languages are all great for writing quick scripts, perl differs in that it is just as well suited for writing large and complex programs.

When you view perl as a full featured programming language and compare it to C or C++, it's clear that some things are easier to do in perl. The web based programs I mentioned do a lot of text processing, which is easier in perl where you don't have to worry about memory allocation, typing, or other low level details as much. That leads to quicker development and easier maintenance, which are important factors for a commercial product.

I think visual basic is a good counter-example to your coworker's rule. Many commercial apps are written in it. The mantra at Lucent/Bell may have worked well because many of their programs were lower-level, hardware-interfacing sorts of programs. Visual basic, perl, etc., make the user interface and some other programming tasks easy, and often rely on libraries and built-in functions for the lower level stuff.

--Solo

--
I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big light blur.

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6x+5.8x. I take requests. ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

A search on Perl and Commercial at Hotscripts gives 51 matches, though many more can be found by browsing, as usually a specific price is given rather than using the word "Commercial".

Infopop have done rather well with their commercial UBB forum series.

__________
"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." -- (Author Unknown)

UBB at least up to early v6 releases (I didn't follow it any further) is also the biggest heap of trash I've ever seen. Allegedly some new guys that came on board around that time worked on getting it cleaner, but nowadays it has largely been eclipsed by vBulletin (written in PHP) anyway.

Makeshifts last the longest.

Hey, I didn't say that it was well-written, just that it sold quite well. ;o)

It was one of the best known forums available at one time, although the freeware, shareware and open source alternatives have eclipsed it since then.

The most popular of these is probably phpBB, although you're likely right about vBulletin being the most popular commercial forum.

__________
"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." -- (Author Unknown)

"go native." In other words, if the OS was written in C, write your application in C, if the OS was written in C++, write your application in C++, etc...

This mantra is significantly oversimplistic. Ask him what language should be used for writing apps for VMS. Then, if he manages to cough up any kind of answer at all, ask him what language should be used to write an application that by virtue of its problem domain needs to be deployed on multiple different types of OSes and multiple different hardware architectures. Say that the exact list of necessary platforms will change on a per-customer basis.

sub H{$_=shift;while($_){$c=0;while(s/^2//){$c++;}s/^4//;$
v.=(' ','|','_',"\n",'\\','/')[$c]}$v}sub A{$_=shift;while
($_){$d=hex chop;for(1..4){$pl.=($d%2)?4:2;$d>>=1}}$pl}$H=
"16f6da116f6db14b4b0906c4f324";print H(A($H)) # -- jonadab
[download]

The product is quite robust and highly customizable, taking advantage of the ability that Perl confers to quickly implement customized tools on a variety of platforms.

And it's done well through the downturn.

Mention should also be made of all the web sites which are built with Perl. Are those not commercial products?

Come to think of it, there are probably a zillion commercial WebGUIs written in Perl. I've even written one myself.

Lucent can't even tell me why I need a dedicated machine for every program they convince our CFO to buy.

Just smile and walk away.