From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2006-04-27T06:33:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for command line applications

On 4/26/06, Alan M <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a Linux administrator and I use Perl for scripting.
> I do not develop any web applications. My programs are command line
> tools.
>
> At this phase I am thinking to upgrade my programming language to either
> Python or Ruby.
>
> Considering the fact that I won't develop any web application, Which one
> would be a better choice for me Perl or Ruby?
>
> Thank you,
> Alan
>

Ruby is incredibly well-suited to this.
As an example, many standard methods are either named (or aliased)
after standard shell commands.
FileUtils.cp, mv, ln
String#grep
etc, etc.

I recently introduced a sysadmin friend of mine to Ruby, and he raves
about how he can write something, come back to it later, and actually
tell what it does.
Apparently this is something Perl isn't good at? Heh.

--Wilson.