Viewing Thread:
"OK, PERL is officially the stupidest language ever:"

http://luke.ac6.org/turbonutter/stuff/screenshot20020404215045.png


I swear to god that's true, and it's been driving me crazy for an hour. Somebody help me!

http://luke.ac6.org/turbonutter/stuff/screenshot20020404215045.png


I swear to god that's true, and it's been driving me crazy for an hour. Somebody help me!

It is hard to read the Xterm screenshots. What is it you are trying to do? I'm not used to PERL but know a fair bit of other languages and know a few PERL users. I can only try.

Xterm? Don't insult me! Eterm all the way baby, yeah! As for legibility, I can read it fine up to 1280x1024, probably higher with a decent monitor. Basically, here is the PERL statement:

if ("foo" == "bar") {
print "Apparently, foo == bar!!!\n";
}

It's a basic if() clause, the cornerstone of any programming language, yet it's printing out "Apparently, foo == bar!!!", when foo blatently doesn't equal bar! It's absolutely crazy! All I want is PERL to acknowledge that foo does not equal bar!

I was using a laptop to view it, made it a bit too small. Eterm yeah sorry :-)

What have you assigned the variables foo and bar? are they strings? nemerical or some other type?

Ok before I go I can only think of a few things it could be.
Maybe something wrong when you assigned the variables, if they are numeric then I think you use the double = but if they are strings I think you need to use eq or equals( ) kind of thing.
I'm not sure if what you posted was the full code you use or if there is more but If you still can't get it let me know, i'll try think some more on it.

I've got it sorted.

Stupid PERL distinguishes betwen "==" (for numerics) and "eq" (for strings). I honestly can't see the point at all. God I hate this language.

Glad it is sorted. It is weird, very weird. But I am sure it has its use for something.

Turbonutter wrote:
> I've got it sorted.

Stupid PERL distinguishes betwen "==" (for
> numerics) and "eq" (for strings). I honestly can't see the point at
> all. God I hate this language.

Simple example

if ("10" == "10.0") {
print "test\n";
}

Returns as true...

if ("10" eq "10.0") {
print "test\n";
}

Returns as false...

Guess that shows the need pretty clearly? String equivalence and numerical equivalence are quite different things hence the need for EQ and NE.

Every language is different, and its easy to hate them at first especially when you're switching from one language to another and the old tricks don't work. They all have their strengths and weaknesses though, in my opinion Perl's string handling is awesome. On the other hand, its syntax leaves something to be desired, pick a character on the keyboard and you can guarantee Perl has some use for it.

But just for the record, I -really- hate Python. :)

-G

Rob, so it's not the language's fault, it's your fault for not knowing the ==/eq distinction.

There probably is a plausible reason for that distinction, but I can't possibly think of it at the moment. In the last four days I've had less sleep than I usually have in one night.

Perl's extremely powerful but weird in a lot of ways. Deal with it :)

No, I refuse :)