From: "James F.  Hranicky" <jfh@...>
Date: 2004-09-17T00:59:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Ex-Perl coders: Howz it feel to convert to Ruby?

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:54:51 +0900
Chris <ceo@nospan.on.net> wrote:

> So I'm looking for feedback from those that have converted, esp. from a 
> hardcore Perl perspective.

Recently it dawned on me that one of the reasons I like Ruby so much is
method chaning. Why? At first, I thought it was because the program
flow went left to right, just like reading. But then it occurred to me
that being able to do something like this:

    `ypcat -k amd_cise`.map { |line|
        line.match(/rhost:=([^;]+)/).captures[0] rescue next
    }.compact.sort.uniq.each { |server|
	...

is just like using Unix pipes. When I used perl, and I needed to process
the output of a command like the above, I would generally do all the
work with a regular Unix pipeline. With ruby, the processing is very
similar already. You have to do a little more work, like catching 
exceptions and things like nil elements, but the program flow is so
natural there's no need to exec the extra programs. 

I recently tried hacking on some Perl (I've written thousands of lines
over the years), and I can barely even remember what to do, which is
fine, really :->

Jim