On Wed, Aug 02, 2006 at 08:37:13AM -0300, chiappa@oi.com.br wrote: > Hello, > > I need to write several scripts for file manipulation, for example: > change name files, read specific columns and write them in a new file, > call fortan programs to read these files, etc. Because I have to learn > how to do this, I wonder what scrip language is better: Perl or Phyton? > or another one? (no flame war please!) > > Thanks in advance > My view is that you can likely accomplish what you want with bash scripting and some command line tools. However, if you want to learn another language (which I think is always a good idea), then consider Python. It is dead easy to learn (Google for "A Byte of Python") and is very robust. For example, after learning even a little Python, you can fairly easily read someone else's Python programs. Additionally, Python makes it difficult to write bad code. That is, you must actively try to write bad code (assuming you already have knowledge of sound software development practices). On the other hand, while Perl is also very powerful, it makes it hard to good code. That is, even if you have knowledge of good software development practices, it is very easy to write unreadable and unmaintainable code in Perl. With that said, Perl is much more widely used currently than Python. There are many more books available on Perl programming than Python programming and there are many people out there with Perl experience than with Python experience. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
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