Larry Wall Speaks

• It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers. :-)

• :       I've tried (in vi) "g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/"...but that doesn't
  : cut it.  Any ideas?  (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).
  

  
  In the first pass, install perl. :-)
• It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all... :-)

  In article <5pratd6c9e.fsf@antelope.cs.rochester.edu>,
  Jonas Karlsson <jonas@cs.rochester.edu> wrote:
  : (I actually tested it this time -- I'm sorry for not testing my
  : assertion before posting my previous article - I die. My body
  : decomposes into a pile of dust which is scattered by the four winds.
  : A speck of the dust settles on a memory chip in Larry Wall's computer
  : leading to spurious, impossible to track down errors in the new perl
  : release, ultimately halting production completely.  Bereft of a new
  : version of Perl, sysadmins everywhere are unable to maintain their systems
  : leading to the collapse of the World Wide Web and the Internet,
  : ultimately causing the downfall of civilization as we know it.  I am
  : ashamed.) 
  

  Er, not to subject you to further shame or anything, but I believe the original formula is supposed to end with "Oh, the embarrassment."

• "I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager... "
• "I do quarrel with logic that says, `Stupid people are associated with X, therefore X is stupid.' Stupid people are associated with everything."
• "[Perl] gives you the STDERR filehandle so that your program can make snide comments off to the side while it transforms (or attempts to transform) your input into your output."
  from "Programming Perl"
• "Don't wear rollerskates to a tug-of-war."
• "...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head."
• "The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma."
• (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.)
  Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.
• You know, by the time you get some with all this, the "Swiss Army Chainsaw" is going to be more like a Swiss Army Tactical Nuke.... :-)
  -- Brandon Allbery
• "You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of irrational discourse."
• "What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"
• There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit.
  -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."

• In article <3ge17o$o87@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU> tchrist@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
  : Tom Christiansen  Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker   tchrist@mox.perl.com
  :   If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good
  :   reason, or a bad reason.  In this case it's a good reason.  :-)
  :             --Larry Wall in <1992Jan17.005405.16806@netlabs.com>
  

  Yeah, I keep saying that.
  The trouble with being quoted a lot is that it makes other people think you're quoting yourself when in fact you're merely repeating yourself.
• "I think I'll side with the pissheads on this one."
• "The young think they are immortal, and are determined to prove otherwise."
• "The only reason [not to use] perl is that some sysadmins don't allow software that they didn't pay for. By all means, let them send me money if it makes them feel better. :-)"
• "Sometimes I wish I could put an expiration date on my quotes."
• "I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anybody it was an accident."
  -- Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio
• Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.
  -- Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something. :-)"
• "I think I'm likely to be certified before Perl is... :-) "
• "C++ is a ridiculously complicated travesty that few have the excess IQ points to understand enough not to screw up massively."
  -- Tom Christiansen
• "The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
• "Perl: There's more than one way to do it.
  Microsludge C++: There's only one way to do it, and we won't tell you which."
  -- Gerben Vos
• "All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory... :-)"
• "And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is. :-)"
• "And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose)."

• :        And it goes against the grain of building small tools.
  

  Innocent, Your Honor. Perl users build small tools all day long.

• /* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
  /*   in its mouth... */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code
• "Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing. :-) "
• Be consistent.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "Besides, including <std_ice_cubes.h> is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there... :-)"
• "Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally. :-)"
• "Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call. :-)"

• break;                          /* don't do magic till later */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code
• "But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news. "
• "Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config.sh. :-) "

• /* dbmrefcnt--;  */     /* doesn't work, rats */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in hash.c from the perl source code

• #define NULL 0           /* silly thing is, we don't even use this */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code

• #define SIGILL 6         /* blech */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code
• Does the same as the system call of that name.
  If you don't know what it does, don't worry about it.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page regarding chroot(2)

• double value;                /* or your money back! */
  short changed;               /* so triple your money back! */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code
• "Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs. "

• echo "Congratulations.  You aren't running Eunice."
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

• echo "Hmmm...you don't have Berkeley networking in libc.a..."
  echo "but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in."
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

• echo "ICK, NOTHING WORKED!!!  You may have to diddle the includes.";;
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

• echo $package has manual pages available in source form.
  echo "However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you."
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

• echo "Your stdio isn't very std."
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

• #else /* !STDSTDIO */     /* The big, slow, and stupid way */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in str.c from the perl source code
• [End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...]
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "Help save the world!"
  --Larry Wall in README
• "Hey, I had to let awk be better at *something*... :-)"
• "I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-) "
• "I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get. :-)"
• "I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes..."
• "If I allowed "next $label" then I'd also have to allow "goto $label", and I don't think you really want that... :-) "
• "If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason. :-)"

• : I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation.
  : Or is it a BUG?"
  

  
  "Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)"

• if (instr(buf,sys_errlist[errno]))  /* you don't see this */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in eval.c from the perl source code

• if (rsfp = mypopen("/bin/mail root","w")) {     /* heh, heh */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code
• "If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York. :-)"
• "If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally... :-)"
• "If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp.lang.misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization. :-) "
• If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl. :-)"
• "I'll say it again for the logic impaired."
• "I might be able to shoehorn a reference count in on top of the numeric value by disallowing multiple references on scalars with a numeric value, but it wouldn't be as clean. I do occasionally worry about that."
• "I'm sure that that could be indented more readably, but I'm scared of the awk parser. "
• "In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-)"
• In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "Interestingly enough, since subroutine declarations can come anywhere, you wouldn't have to put BEGIN {} at the beginning, nor END {} at the end. Interesting, no? I wonder if Henry would like it. :-) "
• "It is easier to port a shell than a shell script."
• "It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is left as an exercise for the reader. :-) "
• "It's all magic. :-)"
• It's documented in The Book, somewhere...

• :  I've heard that there is a shell (bourne or csh)  to perl filter, does
  :  anyone know of this or where I can get it?
  

  
  Yeah, you filter it through Tom Christiansen. :-)
• "I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble... :-)"
• "Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy... :-)"
• "Just don't create a file called -rf. :-)"

• last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:..)...(.*)/&&"'$1'"ge$1&&"'$1'"lt$2'
  

  
  That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat... :-)
• "Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality... :-)"
• "Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature :-)"
• "Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [Was that sufficiently incendiary? :-)]"
• "No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway... :-)"

• /* now make a new head in the exact same spot */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code
• OK, enough hype.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• OOPS! You naughty creature! You didn't run Configure with sh! I will attempt to remedy the situation by running sh for you...
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one. --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "Perl itself is usually pretty good about telling you what you shouldn't do. :-)"
• "Perl programming is an empirical science! "

• pos += screamnext[pos]  /* does this goof up anywhere? */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in util.c from the perl source code

• : Why is this so clumsy?
  

  
  The trick is to use Perl's strengths rather than its weaknesses.
• "Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl. :-) "
• "Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. :-) "
• Remember though that
  THERE IS NO GENERAL RULE FOR CONVERTING A LIST INTO A SCALAR.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page

• s = (char*)(long)retval;                /* ouch */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in doio.c from the perl source code

• signal(i, SIG_DFL); /* crunch, crunch, crunch */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in doarg.c from the perl source code
• "Sorry. My testing organization is either too small, or too large, depending on how you look at it. :-)"

• stab_val(stab)->str_nok = 1;    /* what a wonderful hack! */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code

• str->str_pok |= SP_FBM;                     /* deep magic */
  s = (unsigned char*)(str->str_ptr);         /* deeper magic */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in util.c from the perl source code
• "Tactical? TACTICAL!?!? Hey, buddy, we went from kilotons to megatons several minutes ago. We don't need no stinkin' tactical nukes. (By the way, do you have change for 10 million people?) "
• That means I'll have to use $ans to suppress newlines now.
  Life is ridiculous.
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• The autodecrement is not magical.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors. :-)"

• *** The previous line contains the naughty word "$&".\n
  if /(ibm|apple|awk)/;      # :-)
  

  
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page
• "There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over."
• "There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just like atof() does. Oddly enough, Perl calls atof(). How convenient. :-)"
• "There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity... :-)"
• "There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it. :-)"

• /* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by
  a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in toke.c from the perl source code

• : This made me wonder, suddenly: can telnet be written in perl?
  

  
  Of course it can be written in Perl. Now if you'd said nroff, that would be more challenging...
• "Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly... "

• tmps_base = tmps_max;                /* protect our mortal string */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code
• "Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time."
• "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise."

• /* we have tried to make this normal case as abnormal as possible */
  

  
  --Larry Wall in cmd.c from the perl source code
• "What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwords? :-)"

• : What is the possibility of this being added in the future?
  

  
  In the near future, the probability is close to zero. In the distant future, I'll be dead, and posterity can do whatever they like... :-)
• When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.
  --Larry Wall in the perl man page

• You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars.  
  You can't even think about them!
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• "You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources. :-)"

• Your csh still thinks true is false.  Write to your vendor today and tell
  them that next year Configure ought to "rm /bin/csh" unless they fix their
  blasted shell. :-) 
  

  
  --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
• "You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns? :-)"

Return to Languages index