On 9/17/2010 12:45 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > >> I don't get it. Why wouldn't you just talk to the db directly with >> perl's dbi/dbd, replacing both the awk and C parts? I do that all the >> time. Or was that before dbi - or the dbd you needed? > > Mike, you really aren't reading all of what I wrote. Perl itself wasn't > available in '91-'92. I think you are mistaken about that. "Programming Perl", covering version 4 of perl was published in 1991. Check the printing history if you have a newer copy. Perl itself goes back to 1987 or so. I'm pretty sure I wrote things in version 1 downloaded through usenet. Not sure when dbi/dbd came around but before that there were things like oraperl with specific database clients grafted in. I'll grant the historical value of awk for the prior decade and for the conceptual introduction of hash arrays for scripting languages, though. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com