Python vs. Perl, which is better to learn?

[Andrew Dalke]

Terry Hancock:
>Thanks for the example -- I think there is some definite
>merit to this.  It occurs to me that you might be both more
>clear and more compact (and equally pythonic?) to say:
>
>digit = '[0-9]'
>date = '\(' + 4*digit + '/' + 2*digit + '/' + 2*digit + '\)'
>
>for the regular expression, so you don't have to count
>the digits.

This comes from my Martel project
 (http://www.dalkescientific.com/Martel)

>>> from Martel import Time
>>> Time.make_pattern("%(YYYY)/%(MM)/%(DD)")
'(?P<year?type=long>[0-9]{4})\\/(?P<month?type=numeric>(0[1-9]|1[012]))\\/(?
P<day?
type=numeric>(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]))'
>>> print Martel.select_names(Time.make_expression("%(YYYY)/%(MM)/%(DD)"),
())
[\d]{4}\/(0[1-9]|1[0-2])\/(0[1-9]|[12][\d]|3[01])
>>>

The first one uses an extension to regular expressions to allow XML-style
key/value pairs on the match names.  The second one makes an regexp parse
tree I can manipulate -- in this case to remove all named groups.

This solution is even nicer in some sense because it's easy to
read and it doesn't allow

  1234/56/78

as a legal year.

>My Perl teacher described Perl as being "like English",
>full of idioms and synonyms and ambiguities resolved
>by context -- an organic, naturally evolved solution
>to programming problems. If so, Python is probably like
>Esperanto -- artificial, clean, regular, and easy to
>learn, though perhaps not as creatively expressive in
>itself.

Oh my, not this argument again.  Before people respond,
there's been discussions on the English/Esperanto comparison
before.  Please check the archives.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com