From: "Daniel P. Zepeda" <daniel@...>
Date: 2003-01-25T02:47:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?

Getting back to the original poster's question, "what is not available?", 
I grepped through my Perl sources for 'use' to find what modules I'd be
missing if I had
to write any of that over again:

What I found was that the "missing" things fell into 4 basic categories

1. Things that Ruby already has in the core, or that
   Ruby's design obviates the need for, which Perl needed a 
   module to add the functionality
2. Things I wrote myself that were project-specific
3. Things that are not a big deal, could probably code up in less 
   than an hour
4. Truly missing needed functionality

In the not-a-big-deal category:

User::grent
User::pwent -- Password a group utilities. Admittedly, not a big deal, 
               searched for 'password'
Proc::killall - kills off a process by name, searched for 'process' and
'killall'

In the truly missing category:

Net::DNS - A  DNS interface, to create and process query packets
         - searched for 'DNS'
CPAN

There *was* a last category in my mind, things that I didn't know
about and was pleasantly surprised to find:

SNMP - an interface to UCD SNMP

and 

sablot -  an interface to the ginger alliance's XLST engine.


Of those things I say are missing, I did search RAA and the Pickaxe class
and
standard library guides, for the obvious keyword with no results.


I find it telling that the OP asked for what pieces were missing, but the 
discussion tended to naming conventions and module management. There *is*
a ton of stuff on CPAN, but a lot of it is not needed, because Ruby
obviates
the need for it, and of course, my list is not exhaustive, just my
experiences. 
Maybe after all the discussion is done, we'll find that CPAN is huge
because
it has to be, to add stuff to Perl that Ruby already has, and that the
small
size of Ruby doesn't show the lack of available functionality, but the
power
of the core Ruby. 


-- 
"Daniel P. Zepeda" <daniel@z,e,p,e,d,a,-,z,o,n,e.net>
(Remove commas for address)