Why use Python instead of Perl?

David Brady dbrady at computer.org
Thu Feb 6 18:04:38 EST 2003


On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 15:00, eichin at metacarta.com wrote:
> I then leveraged this into convincing
> everyone that perl code should *all* get rewritten in python, and it
> has worked out well :-)

There is only one thing Python cannot do better than perl, and that is
be an existing perl script.  My own opinion, of course; it appears that
in your case it does that better, too.  :-)

Actually, I have recently found one place where Python fails to shine,
and that is scripting in a whitespace-cramped environment.  If you want
to write an alias for an IRC client, perl's whitespace independence and
variable interpolation both come through nicely.  I would LOVE to get my
hands on a version of Python that used braces (blasphemy, I know)
instead of whitespace.  I don't suppose anybody out there has written a
converter?  I note that this would also allow you to write much more
powerful scripts from the command line with python -c.

Cheers,

-dB, recovering perl addict, 18 months clean by the grace of God






More information about the Python-list mailing list