Les Mikesell wrote: > 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. That may be, but it was *not* part of the standard installations, AFAIK. I remember someone handed me some documentation around '92 or '93, and it wasn't very clear. Meanwhile, awk was there and available and reliable. > > I'll grant the historical value of awk for the prior decade and for the > conceptual introduction of hash arrays for scripting languages, though. YES! I *adore* associative arrays. You, on the other hand, remind me of Larry Wall, who popped into comp.lang.awk around '93 or '94, and rather than try to help someone solve his awk problem, tried to get him to rewrite it into perl.... mark "inappropriate venue, to say the least"