In message <199801220620.BAA26629@northshore.shore.net>, Mike Long writes:
>>In general, I think that we shy away from reliance on perl (I'm not
>>entirely sure why, I think it's mainly religious).

>I don't like the concept of adding perl to the distribution because
>IMHO it's a lot of bloat for not much more functionality than already
>exists (awk, sh, &c.).

I have always sort of disagreed with this, but I never used to have good
data.

Now that I use BSDI a lot, I have good data.

I definitely disagree.

Perl is *wonderful*.  Perl4 was sort of neat; perl5 is a great and
wonderful tool, and I really think it does add a lot to the system.
Perl is just enough more powerful/faster/cleaner/safer to be a big
win.  Safer is the big one - you can't break most perl programs just
by putting spaces in file names, but it's actually hard to write shell
scripts that are completely robust.

Perl makes a great hook on which to hang slightly-harder system tasks,
and I'd like to see it integrated.

>However, that doesn't mean that I would have a
>problem if perl were to be used on www.netbsd.org; AFAIK most of the
>CGI scripts in existence require perl.

Of course, whether or not you agree with my statement above, this is
entirely true.  Complaining about a perl script being used on www.netbsd.org
is about as relevant as complaining about Apache being used on www.netbsd.org,
when the system, as shipped, doesn't contain Apache.

I mean, it's a tool!  Use it!

-s