[Dub-pm] what's Perl used for anyway?

John Day johnd at pci.ie
Mon Sep 27 19:59:10 CDT 2004


Cool (you've done loads with our little olde language :-) havnt you.

>"It'd give people some ideas as to stuff that's actively been done
>with perl, as opposed to just possible."

Thats exactly what I was getting at. There's some things that Perl is an obvious choice for, but most people think of it as a "normal" programming language & treat it as such.

I use it for (in no particular order): 
parsing xml, correlating results & pushing them into excel (xml files range from greek to russian, back again to finnish.)
monitoring of everything from web-servers/nt services/email accounts etc, picture conversion and gallery production (small script I wrote for a friends personal website & amazingly easy), 
pdf creation,
cisco work (conf backups, SNMP monitoring, checking network ports(routers & switchs) on the LAN & whats plugged into them ;-)
webstuff (sending emails, ftp,website screen scrapping)

Some modules I've recently played with:
Image::Magick
HTML::Template
XML::Simple;
Spreadsheet::WriteExcel


>What he said. I guess what we need now on the list would be newbies, who
>could have cromulent questions to ask. I'm sure most of us onlist have at
>least some experience with perl, so please do encourage people to join and
>fire off questions. It's one of the reason we exist! :)

Well said Dave, if anyone has a problem hit the group with it. You never know who might have just "played" with the module your having problems with, & an answer may just be on the end of an email.

All the best.
J


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave O Connor [mailto:doc at redbrick.dcu.ie]
Sent: 28 September 2004 01:06
To: John Day
Cc: dublin-pm at mail.pm.org
Subject: Re: [Dub-pm] what's Perl used for anyway?


John Day said on Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 12:14:51AM +0100:
> Would it be a stupid idea if we all came forward and said what we do (and can do), so when others stumble into that area (which happens all too commonly in IT), we know we can pop off a question here and get a reasonable response with no condensation or flames,  rather then go to some anon site, which is probably full of either flame baiters or "Perl gods" who cant find the earth any more as the have "ascended".

Not at all. It'd give people some ideas as to stuff that's actively been done
with perl, as opposed to just possible. I've done with perl (in chronological
order):

CGIs
Some translation automation tools for a very large (alas now defunct) website.
A WAP IMAP client (with others, for work).
My Uni final year project (an IM client/server toolkit using SOAP).
Windows/Linux automation - replacing batch files. Windows Services.
PRocessing random stuff (notably converting TCPdump output of a H.323/SIP
session into a wavfile of the conversation).
Bits of a billing system using Cisco syslog stuff and RADIUS log mangling.
Small bits of my old employer's VoixeXML platform (web failover stuff, other
mmangling with logs, data monkeying).
A metric assload of mon monitors and alerts.
>  
> ps if ANYONE has ANY Perl questions then please post them to the group, I for one will actively try to either answer the question or point out where to find the solution & I'm sure most other group members feel the same way. Again sorry for not getting to the meeting :-(
> 
What he said. I guess what we need now on the list would be newbies, who
could have cromulent questions to ask. I'm sure most of us onlist have at
least some experience with perl, so please do encourage people to join and
fire off questions. It's one of the reason we exist! :)

    - DoC


**********************************************************************
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they
are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify
the system manager.
***********************************************************************




More information about the Dublin-pm mailing list