>> that for non-trivial scripts, the perl equivalent is typically at
>> least 3 times faster.

>And three times buggier.   I have pretty much given up writing new
>stuff in PERL for that reason - if it's complicated enough to warrant
>using PERL, it's probably safer to write it in C.

I feel perl sits in between pretty well.  I esp like perl for grabbing
stuff out of Oracle databases...

I've written some nifty sh stuff and debuging it is a pain.
Perl is definitely a winner there.

I've been bitten by very few perl problems - and then only in cases
where the amount of data being processed was such that debuging was
virtually impossible :-( 

I agree that for complex stuff, C/C++ is prefered - I like to be able to
attach to a running daemon or grab a core file to see what is going
wrong.

I figure once cygnus have their kaffe/gcc/gdb thing all worked out,
that java will be a big winner... though I hope that 1.2 irons out
some of the wrickles in 1.1

--sjg