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First Perl mention, was Re: First mention of Star Wars in Google

by Albannach (Monsignor)
on Dec 13, 2001 at 11:12 UTC ( [id://131560]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to (Not Perl) First mention of Star Wars in Google

What? You didn't complain that they didn't list Perl? Well I was curious and dug up the following interesting reading in a few minutes. I feel that there should be earlier mention but it eluded me. No matter, these are still worth looking at:
  • In a thread on what motivates a programmer, Larry mentions Perl and the now-famous quote "The two chief virtues in a programmer are laziness and impatience." This was in the pre-hubris days of course.
  • later in that same thread Larry is forced to give a description of Perl (with some examples) when someone asks "So what is this program 'perl'?"
  • Finally the first public distribution of Perl 1.0 (1988-02-01 05:46:32 PST). Just seeing code in multi-part shars was a real trip down memory lane for me... I wonder if something like that would meet their significance threshold for inclusion in their timeline?
I most want to find the actual exchange in which Andy Tanenbaum tells Linus Torvalds that he'd have failed him (had Linus been in Andy's OS class, or country even) during a debate on the pros and cons of monolithic kernels, but so far I've only seen a reference to the posting.

Update: Thanks ar0n! Here is the actual posting in which AST tells Linus

Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)
- he even includes a smiley. It is fascinating to re-read the exchange now, as the current hero Linus comes of as snot-nosed (albeit with some good thinking), and AST as the gracious wise man. I was unable to find this because I felt certain that AST had used the word "fail", but now I see that he was not so harsh.

Update 2: Yes I noticed that good one jmerelo but I didn't list it as it didn't describe Perl much. Another one I ran across was this which is not much later and the .sig comment perhaps shows just how popular Perl had become in a short time. BTW some may recall Mark Biggar being referred to as "Perl's maternal uncle" for many years.

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

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Re: First Perl mention, was Re: First mention of Star Wars in Google
by eduardo (Curate) on Dec 13, 2001 at 19:50 UTC
    So I got to looking at the first perl node that you mention... what an incredibly interesting piece of history! Larry pretty much had the right idea all along :) I however especially like his sample code:
    #!/bin/perl $SIG{'QUIT'} = 'quit'; # install signal handler for SIGQUIT while ($ARGV[0] =~ /^-/) { # parse switches $ARGV[0] =~ /^-h/ && ($showhost++,$silent++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-s/ && ($silent++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-d/ && ($dodist++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-n/ && ($n=' -n',shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-l/ && ($l=' -l ' . $ARGV[1],shift,shift,next); last; } $systype = shift; # get name representing set of hosts while ($ARGV[0] =~ /^-/) { # we allow switches afterwards too $ARGV[0] =~ /^-h/ && ($showhost++,$silent++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-s/ && ($silent++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-d/ && ($dodist++,shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-n/ && ($n=' -n',shift,next); $ARGV[0] =~ /^-l/ && ($l=' -l ' . $ARGV[1],shift,shift,next); last; } if ($dodist) { # distribute input over all rshes? `cat >/tmp/gsh$$`; # get input into a handy place $dist = " </tmp/gsh$$"; # each rsh takes input from there } $cmd = join(' ',@ARGV); # remaining args constitute the com +mand $cmd =~ s/'/'"'"'/g; # quote any embedded single quotes open(ghosts, '/etc/ghosts') || die 'No /etc/ghosts file'; # /etc/ghosts drives the rest $one_of_these = ":$systype:"; # prepare to expand "macros" if ($systype =~ s/\+/[+]/g) { # we hope to end up with list of $one_of_these =~ s/\+/:/g; # colon separated attributes } line: while (<ghosts>) { # for each line of ghosts s/[ \t]*\n//; # trim leading whitespace if (!$_ || /^#/) { # skip blank line or comment next line; } if (/^([a-zA-Z_0-9]+)=(.+)/) { # a macro line? $name = $1; $repl = $2; $repl =~ s/\+/:/g; $one_of_these =~ s/:$name:/:$repl:/; # do expansion in "wanted" + list next line; } # we have a normal line @attr = split; # a list of attributes to match against # which we put into an array $host = $attr[0]; # the first attribute is the host nam +e if ($showhost) { $showhost = "$host:\t"; } attr: while ($attr = pop(attr)) { # iterate over gh arr +ay if (index($one_of_these,":$attr:") >=0) { # is host wanted? unless ($silent) { print "rsh $host$l$n '$cmd'\n"; } $SIG{'INT'} = 'DEFAULT'; if (open(pipe,"rsh $host$l$n '$cmd'$dist |")) { # start rsh $SIG{'INT'} = 'cont'; while (<pipe>) { print $showhost,$_; } # show results close(pipe); } else { $SIG{'INT'} = 'cont'; print "(Can't execute rsh.)\n"; } last attr; # don't select host twice } } } unlink "/tmp/gsh$$" if $dodist; # here are a couple of subroutines that serve as signal handlers sub cont { print "\rContinuing...\n"; } sub quit { $| = 1; print "\r"; $SIG{'INT'} = ''; kill 2, $$; }
    :) I think it'd be fun to translate that to perl 5 (or 6 even) and use all of the new tools... funny thing is, that code would be chastized on perlmonks like crazy... no strict, no -w, handrolled commandline parsing! tsk tsk tsk. (I know that Perl back then didn't have these things, my sarcasm flag is set to 1 :) Also, a very interesting little historical sidenote:
    I wasn't going to add a "goto" except that the sed-to-perl translator needed one.
    :) how fun is that! Also of note: On top of which, C didn't have the picture-style report formats I wanted. And I didn't want to do a make every time I tweaked the program. I take it he is talking about perl formats... a feature that has now been voted out of the core and into a module (if memory serves me right...) So, I guess that says a few things about how perl has moved from a systems management / formatting language to a much more general beast. I guess he succeeded when he said he wanted to make a language that is: intended to be practical (easy to use, efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal).
(ar0n) Re: First Perl mention, was Re: First mention of Star Wars in Google
by ar0n (Priest) on Dec 13, 2001 at 11:54 UTC
    I most want to find the actual exchange in which Andy Tanenbaum tells Linus Torvalds that he'd have failed him ...

    It's here.

    [ ar0n -- want job (boston) ]

Re: First Perl mention, was Re: First mention of Star Wars in Google
by jmerelo (Sexton) on Dec 14, 2001 at 00:25 UTC

    Actually, the first Perl mention seems to be this one

    Faigin, Larry's coworker, mentions Perl as Larry's "3-month old child", together with his real and "programatic children"

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