Please see https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/produce-a-perl-script-that-reformats-data-into-another-format-of-your-choice/326554

1. What is Perl and why is it so good?
Martin Houston, Deluxe Technology Ltd
Perl is a language that has been in
wide use for over 1/4 of a century.
Where did it come from?
What has it been used for?
Why it is still relivant in 2017?

2. Some History
● Perl was begun in 1987 by
brilliant programmer Larry
Wall.
● By the early 90s was
available for wide variety of
Unix systems over the
Internet.
● Way better than writing in
shell, sed & awk!
● In 1994 the new massivley
more powerful Perl5
version released.
● Turned out it was the
perfect tool to work with
the rapidly developing
World Wide Web – fast
turnaround.

3. Perl & the Internet
● Perl already established as
the easiest way to write
software FAST for Unix
systems.
● Early web servers mostly ran
on such systems so initial
explosive growth of the
WWW on the back of Perl.
● Some manufacturers like
Sun Microsystems started
using Perl to write much of
their OS software.
● When Linux came along
Perl was already so well
established it is a part of
every Linux build.

4. Internet brings new challengers
● There are more Perl like
languages today:
● Python
● Ruby
● PHP
● All borrow features from Perl
– in particular the Regular
Expressions.
● Perl5 is still the dominant
version of Perl!
● New releases introduce
improvments without
breaking compatability.
● Decades of stability means
huge existing software
base!

5. Perl designed for quick fixes
● It was designed to solve the
practical problems of
keeping big computers
running day-to-day.
● Not really for the
construction of huge
sooftware engineering
projects by thousand man
teams.
● Many very useful things
can be done by one liners
and programs that fit on a
sheet of paper.
● Try that with BASIC or
Java!

6. But good for big projects too!
● Although the newer
languages like Python are
a little more suited Perl has
been used for some really
big pieces of software such
as:
● Twiki
● Bugzilla
Bioinformatics (gene
sequencing)
● Many websites using one of the
modern OO frameworks.
● Or plain old CGI.
● Perl interfaces to countless
databases with ease of course!

7. Why Perl remains a good choice
● No size limits – if you have a
128GB memory machine
perl will make use of it.
Handling data in memory
always fast!
● The default variables of $_
and @_ make many
common operations much
less wordy
● The object orentation model is
lightweight and easy to
understand. You are not forced
into using it.
● HUGE existing library if tested
solutions called CPAN
● Unit testing of code has been part
of Perl development for decades

8. Why Perl is best choice for data conversion
● Can work with huge
amounts of data types
uncluding binary thanks to
pack/unkack operators
● Lots of useful work – like
bulk editing of files to fix 1
mistake can be done as
one liners.
● Leveraging the CPAN library
means even small programs
can do very complex things –
like web page scraping or
xml parsing.
● No separate compilation.
The source is all you need to
keep around.

9. Why choose Deluxe Technology
● Over 25 years experince in
using Perl to solve huge
variety of computer
problems.
● This gives faster
turnaround than having to
learn everything from
scratch.
● Which enables data
conversion projects to be
handled on a fixed price
basis.
● Think of it as computer
plumbing!
● Thank you for watching.

10. Why choose Deluxe Technology
● Over 25 years experince in
using Perl to solve huge
variety of computer
problems.
● This gives faster
turnaround than having to
learn everything from
scratch.
● Which enables data
conversion projects to be
handled on a fixed price
basis.
● Think of it as computer
plumbing!
● Thank you for watching.