%> > If you are concerned about discrepancies with other BSDs, you should
try
%> > to get NetBSD (and maybe BSDi ? I don't follow BSDi...) to include perl
%> > in their base distribution.
%>
%>Oh, puhleeze!  perl is far from necessary to do many of thing things
%>its used for in `base distributions'.

%it's not necessary, no, but it *is* becoming rather ubiquitous.
%freebsd has it, linux has it (of course), and even solaris comes with
%it now.  solaris 8, that is, which is one weird beast.  while far from
%necessary for most things, it's probably one of the few things that
%almost *anyone* will be installing.

%>Maybe people should actually learn shell and awk better.

%yes.  and sed.  can *anyone* suggest a good sed reference?  i've seen
%huge things done with sed, but *nwever* found a better reference than
%the man page...and that doesn't go very far.  certainly not far enough
%to teach me how to do some of the things that i've seen.

There is an O'reilly book on awk and sed, and though I can't say that I
understand it well, I'm not sure if that isn't a function of my having not
made a deal with the devil. (I've been told that local mythology says that
to understand sed requires such bargains. )I do know that a couple of my
friends who sys admin for a living opened it up to the section on sed and
said "Oooooooooo! I didn't know you could do things like that!" (with much
enthusiasm.) There is a lot of info there.

%>Anyway, the last thing that embedded systems people want is perl
%>required by basic system scripts.

%ugh.  yuck.  bleah!

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