On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 09:43:42AM -0800, Larry Wall wrote:
> [email protected] writes:
> : Does anyone actually teach report generation with format/write? I
> : haven't really seen anyone using it much in the last few years, but I've
> : just had a corporate client ask us to teach "reports" in Perl.
> :
> : It's not part of our standard introductory Perl course, and to be honest
> : I'm dreading having to write it ... ick ick ick.
>
> Unless line printers come back into vogue, I wouldn't put a lot of
> stress on it. These days, most reports are printed on browser screens.
How many COBOL programs are still out there? I'd bet that there are
tons of them. If perl is used to migrate these poor unfortunate
people away from COBOL, format/write comes in handy as a first easy
step.
(As an aside, I had to take a COBOL course to get my CS degree. On
one of the labs, I turned in my 1000+ line COBOL program and my 30
line perl program that functioned equivalently. It used format/write)
(As a further aside, I had a student worker who, on a job interview,
used perl to accomplish a task in less than half an hour that one of
their workers had been struggling to do in COBOL for several days.
(unfortunately for them, they hadn't heard of perl) Needless to say they
wanted to hire him on the spot)
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff
[email protected]
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