Perl & Python: Parrot

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <3adc48d5$0$36584$e2e8da3 at nntp.cts.com>,
Robert Johnson <rjohnson at exotic-eo.com> wrote:
>
>Newbie Question: What does Perl offer that Python cannot already do?  

Nothing.  Then again, the same is technically true of C++.  Speaking
less abstractly, Perl simply offers a different style of programming,
one that is English-like in its complexity and number of idioms and lack
of a generalizable rulebase.  It also uses lots of punctuation in a
meaningful manner.  Perl got started as a combined replacement for
simple C programs and complex awk/sed/shell scripts.  It was intended to
be easy to learn for people who already knew those programming systems,
and to a certain extent it succeeds.

But because of its embrace-and-extend philosophy of language design
(instead of pushing much of its feature set into modules), it has needed
to endure countless contortions in order to add each new feature.
-- 
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