Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Jeff Hill <[email protected]> · Mon, 03 Feb 1997 16:57:51 -0700

Tim Mooney wrote:

> > Perl is a possibility here, but I think TCL is probably a better choice.
> > However, I'd like to propose Python as an even better choice.
> 
> In my opinion, neither Perl not tcl are appropriate languages for this
> purpose because their syntaxes are just too weird and too strewn with
> subtle gotchas for casual use.  What I've seen of Python looks very
> good (except for that stupid business of using indentation alone to do
> what C does with curly braces.)
> 

As I understand it, perl has text/file/path manipulation 
capabilities far beyond what is available in most scripting 
languages. These text process capabilities are needed if we 
are to replace the use of sed, awk, ... in the EPICS build and
consolidate on one additional installed product (perhaps 
perl). These changes would allow us to build EPICS on
NT, VMS, ... with only the EPICS build system, perl, and gnu make. 

At the risk of being flamed I will repeat some rumors I have heard:

perl: 
	utilitarian and widely used - special text
	processing, path parsing, and other system adm stuff.
	Inherits syntax peculiarities from awk?
java: 
	single inheritance 
	(compiler required if not java script -
	does this have text/file/path manipulation support 
	comparable to perl? )
python: 
	multiple inheritance 
	(does this have text/file/path manipulation support 
	comparable to perl?)
tcl: 
	pre-processor heavy 
	(doest this have text/file/path manipulation support 
	comparable to perl?)

I must admit that I program mostly in C/C++ rather than in 
scripting languages and so I am far from an expert in this area.
Please feel free to enhance/correct the above comparison so that
we can make an informed choice.

Jeff

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey O. Hill                 Internet        [email protected]
LANL MS H820                    Voice           505 665 1831
Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA        FAX             505 665 5107

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System