[Rehovot-pm] who needs perl? we all do.

[jswarz at attbi.com]

Hello folks.  I'd like to add my part on who needs PERL.  I am currently doing 
some bioinformatics for a genetics lab in the US.  The beauty of perl is that 
you can manipulate biological data (i.e. nucleotide sequences) which does not 
convert very well into 0's and 1's.  Languages like JAVA do not have the 
capacity to manipulate textual references which convey enormous amounts of 
information to the biological researcher.  PERL solves most of that.  

While bioinformatics may fade as a discipline in and of itself, within the 
next decade, all researchers in the biological sciences will need to have a 
facility with perl to accomodate high-throughput analysis in the course of 
their everyday work.

Keep in touch.  JAS