Why should I switch to Python?

[Dan Schmidt]

Paul Winkler <slinkp23 at yahoo.com> writes:

| The key line is this, in my version:
| 
| 	for f in friends[name]: 
| 
| Your version:
| 
| 	for $f (@{ $friends{ $name } }) {
| 
| > Of course, the de-referencing of the array reference looks bizarre,
|                                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
| Yes, it does. :) More to the point, I got too frustrated with
| staring at man perldsc and man perllol trying to understand it. Can
| you explain the meaning of each bit of punctuation on that line?

This is the wrong newsgroup, I realize, but I thought I should share
the Rule That Makes Using Perl References Easy (well, straightforward,
at least): Wherever you can normally use a raw variable name (sans
punctuation prefix), you can use a reference.  e.g.,

  ${$ref} (or $$ref) is 'the scalar $ref' just as $foo is 'the
  scalar foo'.

  @{$friends{$name}} is 'the array $friends{$name}' just as @foo is
  'the array foo'.

That said, I like Python better than Perl too (except for ten-line
text-munging programs).

-- 
Dan Schmidt | http://www.dfan.org