Greetings fellow monks,

It was a sad occasion this week when I made a final update to a Perl script I maintain that is soon to be retired. It was supposed to be a temporary financial reporting solution for the company I work for, and was hacked together in record time back in 1997 by a contractor. Three years later I inherited it (the contractor was long gone), and we began an immediate love/hate relationship. I made my first update before I even new Perl, wrestling with it over one long 4th of July. Every quarter or so thereafter our paths would cross again and I'd have to mold it to accomodate whatever new twists the finance folks decided to introduce.

I cut my Perl teeth on that script, and now it's going away. What's a Perl geek to do?

Here, then, is my dilemma:

My job entails web application development for MS IIS/SQL2000. Other than my daliance with Perl, my team works exclusively with ASP/VBScript, JavaScript, and Visual Studio.NET/VB.NET. I deal very little with Sys Admin issues since our servers are maintained by another group as part of a server farm.

How can I continue to effectively use Perl in primarily MS shop? Visual Perl would be fun, but it's not really and option since no one else on my team has the knowledge to support it.

I welcome any ideas, particularly those from developers with similar environmental challenges. Two possiblities that I can think of off the top of my head are:

• Rapid Prototyping
• File Handling

I welcome any enlightenment that the bretheren (and sisteren!?) can provide.

P.S. Appologies if this is not quite right for SoPW.