Easy Things Should Be Easy and Hard Things Should Be Possible

Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954) is a programmer, best known as the creator of the Perl programming language.

Quotes [edit]

Usenet postings [edit]

1990 [edit]

Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something.
- Usenet article <9682@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is.
- Usenet article <10209@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing.
- Usenet article <9847@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call.
- Usenet article <7937@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config.sh.
- Usenet article <9384@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get.
- Usenet article <10502@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...
- Usenet article <8538@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Piet van Oostrum: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?
Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature.
- Usenet article <6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

(To someone at New York University) If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York.
- Usenet article <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally...
- Usenet article <7577@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl.
- Usenet article <7865@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

I'm sure that that could be indented more readably, but I'm scared of the awk parser.
- Usenet article <6849@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is left as an exercise for the reader.
- Usenet article <7448@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

It's all magic.
- Usenet article <7282@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

It's documented in The Book, somewhere...
- Usenet article <10502@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all...
- Usenet article <10160@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Dan Smith: I've tried (in vi) 'g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/'...but that doesn't cut it. Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).
Larry Wall: In the first pass, install perl.
- Usenet article <6849@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality...
- Usenet article <6940@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature
- Usenet article <2609@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> (1990)

Perl programming is an *empirical* science!
- Usenet article <10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl.
- Usenet article <7874@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
- Usenet article <8571@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors.
- Usenet article <8854@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity...
- Usenet article <7886@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it.
- Usenet article <7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly...
- Usenet article <2969@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> (1990)

What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards?
- Usenet article <8162@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?
- Usenet article <7349@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1990)

1991 [edit]

All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory...
- Usenet article <1991Jul13.010945.19157@netlabs.com> (1991)

Besides, including <std_ice_cubes.h> is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there...
- Usenet article <1991Aug22.220929.6857@netlabs.com> (1991)

Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally.
- Usenet article <1991May31.181659.28817@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> (1991)

Hey, I had to let awk be better at *something*...
- Usenet article <1991Nov7.200504.25280@netlabs.com> (1991)

If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that...
- Usenet article <1991Mar11.230002.27271@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> (1991)

In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is.
- Usenet article <1991Jul31.174523.9447@netlabs.com> (1991)

I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.
- On s/foo/bar/eieio Usenet article <10911@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1991)

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.
- Regarding 10_000_000 Usenet article <11556@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1991)

I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble...
- Usenet article <11333@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1991)

Just don't create a file called -rf.
- Usenet article <11393@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1991)

last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:.)...(.*)/&&"'$1'"ge$1&&"'$1'"lt$2'
That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat...
- Usenet article <1991Apr29.072206.5621@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> (1991)

No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway...
- Usenet article <1991Aug7.180856.2854@netlabs.com> (1991)

Perl itself is usually pretty good about telling you what you shouldn't do.
- Usenet article <11091@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> (1991)

Sorry. My testing organization is either too small, or too large, depending on how you look at it.
- Usenet article <1991Apr22.175438.8564@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> (1991)

There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just like atof() does. Oddly enough, Perl calls atof(). How convenient.
- Usenet article <1991Jun24.231628.14446@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> (1991)

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.
- Usenet article <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com> (1991)

1992 [edit]

... an initial underscore already conveys strong feelings of magicalness to a C programmer.
- Usenet article <1992Nov9.195250.23584@netlabs.com> (1992)

And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).
- Usenet article <1992Jul3.191825.14435@netlabs.com> (1992)

: And it goes against the grain of building small tools.
Innocent, Your Honor. Perl users build small tools all day long.
- Usenet article <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> (1992)

But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news.
- Usenet article <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> (1992)

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
- Usenet article <1992Jul2.222039.26476@netlabs.com> (1992)

If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason.
- Usenet article <1992Jan17.005405.16806@netlabs.com> (1992)

If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp.lang.misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization.
- Usenet article <1992Mar5.180926.19041@netlabs.com> (1992)

> (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.)
Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.
- Usenet article <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> (1992)

Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy...
- Usenet article <1992May12.190238.5667@netlabs.com> (1992)

Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [Was that sufficiently incendiary?]
- Usenet article <1992Jan10.201804.11926@netlabs.com> (1992)

There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over.
- Usenet article <1992Aug19.041614.6963@netlabs.com> (1992)

...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head.
- Usenet article <1992Aug6.221512.5963@netlabs.com> (1992)

Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.
- Usenet article <1992Aug13.192357.15731@netlabs.com> (1992)

What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?
- Usenet article <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> (1992)

You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources.
- Usenet article <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> (1992)

Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
- Usenet article <1992Sep21.214659.22849@netlabs.com> (1992)

1994 [edit]

Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as
'Unix'.
- Usenet article <1994Apr6.184419.3687@netlabs.com> (1994)

Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park.
Jurassic Park, that is.
- Usenet article <1994Jun15.074039.2654@netlabs.com> (1994)

Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.
- Usenet article <1994Jul21.173737.16853@netlabs.com> (1994)

I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude.
- Usenet article <1994Nov12.013919.21133@netlabs.com> (1994)

1997 [edit]

I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially.
- Usenet article <199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org> (1997)

The whole history of computers is rampant with cheerleading at best and bigotry at worst.
- Usenet article <199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org> (1997)

If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them.
- Usenet article <199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org> (1997)

As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but the truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle.
- Usenet article <199702111639.IAA28425@wall.org> (1997)

Odd that we think definitions are definitive.
- Usenet article <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org> (1997)

: But for some things, Perl just isn't the optimal choice.
(yet)
- Usenet article <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org> (1997)

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.
- Usenet article <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org> (1997)

If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you.
- Usenet article <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org> (1997)

So far we've managed to avoid turning Perl into APL.
- Usenet article <199702251904.LAA28261@wall.org> (1997)

Not that I have anything much against redundancy. But I said that already.
- Usenet article <199702271735.JAA04048@wall.org> (1997)

They can always run stderr through uniq.
- Usenet article <199704012331.PAA16535@wall.org> (1997)

I'd put my money where my mouth is, but my mouth keeps moving.
- Usenet article <199704051723.JAA28035@wall.org> (1997)

Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language.
- Usenet article <199704251604.JAA27300@wall.org> (1997)

Call me bored, but don't call me boring.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

I think $[ is more like a coelacanth than a mastadon.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

We question most of the mantras around here periodically, in case you hadn't noticed.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

That could certainly be done, but I don't want to fall into the Forth trap, where every running Forth implementation is really a different language.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

Tcl long ago fell into the Forth trap, and is now trying desperately to extricate itself (with some help from Sun's marketing department).
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

The whole intent of Perl 5's module system was to encourage the growth of Perl culture rather than the Perl core.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

Randal can write one-liners again. Everyone is happy, and peace spreads over the whole Earth.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets screwed.
- Usenet article <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org> (1997)

No prisoner's dilemma here. Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.
- Usenet article <199705102042.NAA00851@wall.org> (1997)

P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did...
- Usenet article <199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org> (1997)

You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language.
- Usenet article <199706242038.NAA29853@wall.org> (1997)

I think you didn't get a reply because you used the terms 'correct' and 'proper', neither of which has much meaning in Perl culture.
- Usenet article <199706251602.JAA01786@wall.org> (1997)

I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very interesting numbers.
- Usenet article <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> (1997)

True, it returns ' ' for false, but ' ' is an even more interesting number than 0.
- Usenet article <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> (1997)

Any false value is gonna be fairly boring in Perl, mathematicians notwithstanding.
- Usenet article <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> (1997)

We didn't put in ^^ because then we'd have to keep telling people what it means, and then we'd have to keep telling them why it doesn't short circuit. :-/
- Usenet article <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> (1997)

Anybody want a binary telemetry frame editor written in Perl?
- Usenet article <199708012226.PAA22015@wall.org> (1997)

Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies.
- Usenet article <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org> (1997)

Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers.
- Usenet article <199708252256.PAA00105@wall.org> (1997)

Personally, I like to defiantly split my infinitives.
- Usenet article <199708271551.IAA10211@wall.org> (1997)

Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself.
- Usenet article <199708261932.MAA05218@wall.org> (1997)

The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.
- Usenet article <199709012312.QAA08121@wall.org> (1997)

The following two statements are usually both true:
There's not enough documentation.
There's too much documentation.
- Usenet article <199709020026.RAA08431@wall.org> (1997)

Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches.
- Usenet article <199709021744.KAA12428@wall.org> (1997)

The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way.
- Usenet article <199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org> (1997)

At many levels, Perl is a 'diagonal' language.
- Usenet article <199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org> (1997)

I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we settle on anything. All things have the advantages of their disadvantages, and vice versa.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

Sometimes we choose the generalization. Sometimes we don't.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

It's appositival, if it's there. And it doesn't have to be there. And it's really obvious that it's there when it's there.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

As with all the other proposals, it's basically just a list of words. You can deal with that...
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

I hope I'm not getting so famous that I can't think out load [sic] anymore.
- Usenet article <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> (1997)

It would be possible to optimize some forms of goto, but I haven't bothered.
- Usenet article <199709041935.MAA27136@wall.org> (1997)

A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy.
- Usenet article <199709041935.MAA27136@wall.org> (1997)

How do Crays and Alphas handle the POSIX problem?
- Usenet article <199709050042.RAA29379@wall.org> (1997)

Well, that's more-or-less what I was saying, though obviously addition is a little more cosmic than the bitwise operators.
- Usenet article <199709051808.LAA01780@wall.org> (1997)

You tell it that it's indicative by appending $!. That's why we made $! such a short variable name, after all.
- Usenet article <199709081801.LAA20629@wall.org> (1997)

The choice of approaches could be made the responsibility of the programmer.
- Usenet article <199709081901.MAA20863@wall.org> (1997)

As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer.
- Usenet article <199709081854.LAA20830@wall.org> (1997)

If you're going to define a shortcut, then make it the base [sic] darn shortcut you can.
- Usenet article <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org> (1997)

It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a pleasant day.
- Usenet article <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org> (1997)

It's getting harder and harder to think out loud. One of these days someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me...
- Usenet article <199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org> (1997)

I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.
- Usenet article <199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org> (1997)

But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl.
- Usenet article <199709251614.JAA15718@wall.org> (1997)

Oh, wait, that was Randal...nevermind...
- Usenet article <199709261754.KAA23761@wall.org> (1997)

P.S. I suppose I really should be nicer to people today, considering I'll be singing in Billy Graham's choir tonight...
- Usenet article <199709261754.KAA23761@wall.org> (1997)

Magically turning people's old scalar contexts into list contexts is a recipe for several kinds of disaster.
- Usenet article <199709291631.JAA08648@wall.org> (1997)

And we can always supply them with a program that makes identical files into links to a single file.
- Usenet article <199709292012.NAA09616@wall.org> (1997)

I wasn't recommending that we make the links for them, only provide them with the tools to do so if they want to take the gamble (or the gambol).
- Usenet article <199709292259.PAA10407@wall.org> (1997)

This has been planned for some time. I guess we'll just have to find someone with an exceptionally round tuit.
- Usenet article <199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org> (1997)

    switch (ref $@) {
    OverflowError =>
warn 'Dam needs to be drained';
    DomainError =>
warn 'King needs to be trained';
    NuclearWarError =>
die;
    }
- Usenet article <199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org> (1997)

I surely do hope that's a syntax error.
- Usenet article <199710011752.KAA21624@wall.org> (1997)

Anyway, my money is still on use strict vars . . .
- Usenet article <199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org> (1997)

If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee.
- Usenet article <199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org> (1997)

I don't think it's worth washing hogs over.
- Usenet article <199710060253.TAA09723@wall.org> (1997)

It's certainly easy to calculate the average attendance for Perl conferences.
- Usenet article <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org> (1997)

Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers.
- Usenet article <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org> (1997)

Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings. (With 8.0 they're rethinking that. Of course, Perl rethought that from the start.)
- Usenet article <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org> (1997)

Just don't make the '9' format pack/unpack numbers...
- Usenet article <199710091434.HAA00838@wall.org> (1997)

I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.
- Usenet article <199710120226.TAA06867@wall.org> (1997)

To ordinary folks, conversion is not always automatic. It's something that may or may not require explicit assistance. See Billy Graham.
- Usenet article <199710141738.KAA22289@wall.org> (1997)

Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',..). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.
- Usenet article <199710161537.IAA07828@wall.org> (1997)

It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip...
- Usenet article <199710161546.IAA07885@wall.org> (1997)

As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.
- Usenet article <199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org> (1997)

The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
- Usenet article <199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org> (1997)

That should probably be written:
no !@#$%^&*:@!semicolon
- Usenet article <199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org> (1997)

That gets us out of deciding how to spell Reg[eE]xp?|RE . . . Of course, then we have to decide what ref $re returns...
- Usenet article <199710171838.LAA24968@wall.org> (1997)

'Course, that doesn't work when 'a' contains parentheses.
- Usenet article <199710211647.JAA17957@wall.org> (1997)

I was trying not to mention backtracking. Which, of course, means that yours is 'righter' than mine, in a theoretical sense.
- Usenet article <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org> (1997)

Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.)
- Usenet article <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org> (1997)

(To the extent that anyone but a Prolog programmer can understand \X totally. (And to the extent that a Prolog programmer can understand 'cut'.)
- Usenet article <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org> (1997)

Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right.
- Usenet article <199710211959.MAA18990@wall.org> (1997)

You don't have to wait--you can have it in 5.004_54 or so.
- Usenet article <199710221740.KAA24455@wall.org> (1997)

There's something to be said for returning the whole syntax tree.
- Usenet article <199710221833.LAA24741@wall.org> (1997)

It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend.
- Usenet article <199710221721.KAA24321@wall.org> (1997)

Double *sigh*. _04 is going onto thousands of CDs even as we speak, so to speak.
- Usenet article <199710221718.KAA24299@wall.org> (1997)

The code also assumes that it's difficult to misspell 'a' or 'b'.
- Usenet article <199710221731.KAA24396@wall.org> (1997)

Well, hey, let's just make everything into a closure, and then we'll have our general garbage collector, installed by 'use less memory'.
- Usenet article <199710221744.KAA24484@wall.org> (1997)

People who understand context would be steamed to have someone else dictating how they can call it.
- Usenet article <199710221710.KAA24242@wall.org> (1997)

For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.
- Usenet article <199710221710.KAA24242@wall.org> (1997)

Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.
- Usenet article <199710221710.KAA24242@wall.org> (1997)

The way these things go, there are probably 6 or 8 kludgey ways to do it, and a better way that involves rethinking something that hasn't been rethunk yet.
- Usenet article <199710221859.LAA24889@wall.org> (1997)

Beauty? What's that?
- Usenet article <199710221937.MAA25131@wall.org> (1997)

I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, proceed is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room.
- Usenet article <199710281816.KAA29614@wall.org> (1997)

I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no semantics. :-(
- Usenet article <199710290036.QAA01818@wall.org> (1997)

Yes, we have consensus that we need 64 bit support.
- Usenet article <199710291922.LAA07101@wall.org> (1997)

: - cut in regexps
I don't think we reached consensus on that. We're still backtracking...
- Usenet article <199710291922.LAA07101@wall.org> (1997)

Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map!
Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations...
Boss: And what's that 'goto' doing there?!?
Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing 'getservbyport'...
Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL.
- Usenet article <199710311732.JAA19169@wall.org> (1997)

Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo
- Usenet article <199710311916.LAA19760@wall.org> (1997)

Hey, if pi == 3, and three == 0, does that make pi == 0?
- Usenet article <199711011926.LAA25557@wall.org> (1997)

(Never thought I'd be telling Malcolm and Ilya the same thing...
- Usenet article <199711071819.KAA29909@wall.org> (1997)

And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird in other ways, like 'scalar', and 'goto'.
- Usenet article <199711071749.JAA29751@wall.org> (1997)

Portability should be the default.
- Usenet article <199711072201.OAA01123@wall.org> (1997)

If this were Ada, I suppose we'd just constant fold 1/0 into
die 'Illegal division by zero
- Usenet article <199711100226.SAA12549@wall.org> (1997)

Are you perchance running on a 64-bit machine?
- Usenet article <199711102149.NAA16878@wall.org> (1997)

Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose.
- Usenet article <199712040054.QAA13811@wall.org> (1997)

There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin.
- Usenet article <199712041747.JAA18908@wall.org> (1997)

Reserve your abuse for your true friends.
- Usenet article <199712041852.KAA19364@wall.org> (1997)

1998 [edit]

Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list is starting to resemble a feature list. You must be human or something.
- Usenet article <199801081824.KAA29602@wall.org> (1998)

It's hard to tune heavily tuned code.
- Usenet article <199801141725.JAA07555@wall.org> (1998)

Perl will always provide the null.
- Usenet article <199801151818.KAA14538@wall.org> (1998)

It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun.
- Usenet article <199801151836.KAA14656@wall.org> (1998)

Well, I think Perl should run faster than C.
- Usenet article <199801200306.TAA11638@wall.org> (1998)

To Perl, or not to Perl, that is the kvetching.
- Usenet article <199801200310.TAA11670@wall.org> (1998)

I suppose you could switch grammars once you've seen 'use strict subs'.
- Usenet article <199804140117.SAA02006@wall.org> (1998)

Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died...
- Usenet article <199804141540.IAA05247@wall.org> (1998)

Even the White House has a press agent.
- Usenet article <199804150048.RAA08083@wall.org> (1998)

That's a valid argument. I just don't think it's valid enough.
- Usenet article <199804150050.RAA08093@wall.org> (1998)

Perl should remain fast and intuitive (to the extent that it is :-)
- Usenet article <199804151704.KAA12290@wall.org> (1998)

I would estimate that the number of programs it breaks in the world will be less than 10. As long as one of those 10 isn't CGI.pm, we're probably okay.
- Usenet article <199804161805.LAA18882@wall.org> (1998)

Just put in another goto, and then it'll be readable.
- Usenet article <199804161810.LAA18902@wall.org> (1998)

I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, 'What is that, swearing?
- Usenet article <199806181642.JAA10629@wall.org> (1998)

Y'know, there are other possibilities if we assume that filenames are UTF-8...yikes...wait, put down that meat cleaver! Aieeee!!!
- Usenet article <199806181655.JAA10702@wall.org> (1998)

print rand rand rand 1, '\n'; # interesting distribution
- Usenet article <199806191536.IAA19013@wall.org> (1998)

: I could understand principles of Perl source in 2-3 days [. . .]
Gee, it took me about eleven years.
- Usenet article <199806200201.TAA22277@wall.org> (1998)

There's often more than one correct thing.
There's often more than one right thing.
There's often more than one obvious thing.
- Usenet article <199806201726.KAA26569@wall.org> (1998)

I don't believe I've ever cuddled my elses.
- Usenet article <199806221550.IAA07171@wall.org> (1998)

I've always maintained a cordial dislike for indent, because it's usually
right.
- Usenet article <199806221558.IAA07251@wall.org> (1998)

I'd make people say 'use Fork;' if I thought I could get away with it.
- Usenet article <199806232054.NAA01735@wall.org> (1998)

The way I see it, if you declare something portable, you'll always be wrong, and if you declare it non-portable, you'll always be right.
- Usenet article <199806232215.PAA02356@wall.org> (1998)

Perhaps you should compile your Perl with long doubles one of these megaseconds.
- Usenet article <199806241734.KAA09652@wall.org> (1998)

: Why Bible quotes exclusively? What happened to the Eastern religions?<BR>
I'm still working on the Unicode mods.
- Usenet article <199807021924.MAA05380@wall.org> (1998)

Maybe we should take a clue from FTP and put in an option like 'print hash marks on every 1024 iterations'.
- Usenet article <199807171819.LAA13771@wall.org> (1998)

And besides, if Perl really takes off in the Windows space, I think the rest of us would just as soon have a double-agent within ActiveState.
- Usenet article <199807172334.QAA18255@wall.org> (1998)

The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself :-), and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor. (Working on Perl, of course.)
- Usenet article <199807211548.IAA26184@wall.org> (1998)

I note that the Python folks still think they like JPython. I wonder how long that will last?
- Usenet article <199808050009.RAA22631@wall.org> (1998)

I view the JVM as just another architecture that Perl ought to be ported to. (That, and the Underwood typewriter...)
- Usenet article <199808050415.VAA24026@wall.org> (1998)

So please don't think I have a 'down' on the MVS people. I'm just pulling off their arms to beat other people over the head with.
- Usenet article <199808050415.VAA24026@wall.org> (1998)

It's, uh, pseudo code. Yeah, that's the ticket...
[...]
And 'unicode' is pseudo code for $encoding.
- Usenet article <199808071717.KAA12628@wall.org> (1998)

: What do people think?
What, do people think?
- Usenet article <199808071736.KAA12738@wall.org> (1998)

Well, sure, I explicitly mentioned 'vtables' last time I brought this up. But a single pointer is fairly paltry, as tables go.
- Usenet article <199808170117.SAA19369@wall.org> (1998)

I dunno. Perhaps you should be happy that I have a policy of refraining from grumbling about handicapped operating systems.
- Usenet article <199808291719.KAA12244@wall.org> (1998)

Perl did not get where it is by ignoring psychological factors.
- Usenet article <199809031634.JAA26895@wall.org> (1998)

On the plus side, it's a lot easier in general to find /usr/include than cpp.
- Usenet article <199809041612.JAA05556@wall.org> (1998)

Psychotics are consistently inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent.
- Usenet article <199809041918.MAA06850@wall.org> (1998)

That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions.
- Usenet article <199809091801.LAA15194@wall.org> (1998)

If this were Ada, we'd simply doc it as 'erroneous'.
- Usenet article <199809111734.KAA28296@wall.org> (1998)

So I'm thinking about ??, or !!, or //, or \\, or whatever. But I think I like ?? the best so far. Or the least worst.
- Usenet article <199809150037.RAA17580@wall.org> (1998)

One operator is no big deal. That can be fixed in a jiffy.
- Usenet article <199809151814.LAA22396@wall.org> (1998)

In Clintonese, that would be 'You are free to infer that I was saying that.'
- Usenet article <199809222305.QAA17574@wall.org> (1998)

Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?
- Usenet article <199809230518.WAA19312@wall.org> (1998)

But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)
- Usenet article <199809230518.WAA19312@wall.org> (1998)

My arthritic pinkies are already starting to ache just thinking about ||||=.
- Usenet article <199809251659.JAA06689@wall.org> (1998)

Orthogonality for orthogonality's sake is not something I'm keen on.
- Usenet article <199809260112.SAA17178@wall.org> (1998)

Must be a different Larry Wall. There are at least 137 of us in the U.S.
- Usenet article <199809300035.RAA12495@wall.org> (1998)

Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
- Usenet article <6vhq4r%24a6i@kiev.wall.org> (1998)

That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it.
- Usenet article <6vu1vo%2489c@kiev.wall.org> (1998)

That being said, I think we should immediately deprecate any string concatenation that combines '19' with '99'.
- Usenet article <199811242002.MAA26850@wall.org> (1998)

The Golden Gate wasn't our fault either, but we still put a bridge across it.
- Usenet article <199811242253.OAA28167@wall.org> (1998)

It should be illegal to yell 'Y2K' in a crowded economy.
- Usenet article <199811242326.PAA28495@wall.org> (1998)

2003 [edit]

One thing I do understand is that people get scared when I start thinking out loud.
- Usenet article <20031212010945.GB29594@wall.org> (2003)

: No comment, since this is still hovering (see Larry's reply).
Flutter, flutter.
- Usenet article <20031213005325.GE7605@wall.org> (2003)

We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types--in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor...
- Usenet article <20031213210102.GE18685@wall.org> (2003)

Accidental stacks considered harmful.
- Usenet article <20031213202246.GD18685@wall.org> (2003)

I try not to confuse roles and traits in my own life. Being the Perl god is a role. Being a stubborn cuss is a trait.
- Usenet article <20031215021442.GA4012@wall.org> (2003)

And in the limiting case where the optimizer is completely broken because it's not implemented yet, we get to work around that too. Optionally...
- Usenet article <20031217195433.GB31020@wall.org> (2003)

I think I'm happier with that. $rubyometer += 0.3 or so.
- Usenet article <20031219184224.GA19865@wall.org> (2003)

Source code [edit]

Quotations come from the source code to Perl version 4. Some may be present in more recent versions as well.

`cons.c` [edit]

double value; /* or your money back! */ short changed; /* so triple your money back! */

/* now make a new head in the exact same spot */

`perl.c` [edit]

#define NULL 0 /* silly thing is, we don't even use this */

#define SIGILL 6 /* blech */

if (rsfp = mypopen('/bin/mail root','w')) { /* heh, heh */

`stab.c` [edit]

/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */

break; /* don't do magic till later */

stab_val(stab)->str_nok = 1; /* what a wonderful hack! */

tmps_base = tmps_max; /* protect our mortal string */

`util.c` [edit]

pos += screamnext[pos] /* does this goof up anywhere? */

str->str_pok |= SP_FBM; /* deep magic */ s = (unsigned char*)(str->str_ptr); /* deeper magic */

`Configure` [edit]

The Configure script in the Perl source code is generated by a tool called Metaconfig, which was also used in a number of Larry Wall's other programs.

echo 'Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice.

echo 'Hmmm...you don't have Berkeley networking in libc.a...' echo 'but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in.

echo 'ICK, NOTHING WORKED!!! You may have to diddle the includes.';;

echo $package has manual pages available in source form. echo 'However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you.

echo 'Your stdio isn't very std.'

[End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...]

OOPS! You naughty creature! You didn't run Configure with sh! I will attempt to remedy the situation by running sh for you...

That means I'll have to use $ans to suppress newlines now.
Life is ridiculous.

There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit.

You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!

Your csh still thinks true is false. Write to your vendor today and tell them that next year Configure ought to 'rm /bin/csh' unless they fix their blasted shell.

Other files [edit]

/* we have tried to make this normal case as abnormal as possible */
- cmd.c.

s = (char*)(long)retval; /* ouch */
- doio.c.

signal(i, SIG_DFL); /* crunch, crunch, crunch */
- doarg.c.

if (instr(buf,sys_errlist[errno])) /* you don't see this */
- eval.c.

/* dbmrefcnt--; */ /* doesn't work, rats */
- hash.c.

#else /* !STDSTDIO */ /* The big, slow, and stupid way */
- str.c.

/* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */
- toke.c

Documentation [edit]

Be consistent.
- In the perl man page.

Does the same as the system call of that name. If you don't know what it does, don't worry about it.
- In the perl man page regarding chroot(2).

Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.
- In the perl man page.

Help save the world!
- In README

If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.
- In the perl man page.

In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.
- In the perl man page.

Okay, that's definitely enough hype.
- In the perl man page.

Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.
- In the perl man page.

Remember though that
THERE IS NO GENERAL RULE FOR CONVERTING A LIST INTO A SCALAR.
- In the perl man page.

The autodecrement is not magical.
- In the perl man page.

*** The previous line contains the naughty word '$&'.\n
if /(ibm|apple|awk)/; # :-)
- In the perl man page.

When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.
- In the perl man page.

Public Talks [edit]

"2nd State of the Onion" [edit]

Taken from the transcript of the talk.

On Jon Postel's robustness principle applied to human communication:

People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You'd think that would also be obvious. Instead, we're taught to express ourselves.

"3rd State of the Onion" [edit]

Taken from the transcript of the talk.

But I'm not here to talk about postmodernism. I tried to do that last spring, and afterwards I was thoroughly deconstructed by the deconstructionists for attempting to deconstruct deconstructionism. At least, that's the construction I put on their construction of it. I was talking about postmodern culture, and they thought I was talking about postmodern literature. Not at all the same thing!

"Present Continuous - Future Perfect" [edit]

Taken from the transcript of the talk.

And C was good at something I like to call manipulexity, that is the manipulation of complex things. While shell was good at something else which I call whipuptitude, the aptitude for whipping things up.

So... Perhaps the Perl 6 slogan should be "All Your Paradigms Are Belong To Us". We'll get to that.

I simultaneously believe that languages are wonderful and awful. You have to hold both of those. Ugly things can be beautiful. And beautiful can get ugly very fast. You know, take Lisp. You know, it's the most beautiful language in the world. At least up until Haskell came along. (laughter) But, you know, every program in Lisp is just ugly. I don't figure how that works.

Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.
- "We've got to start over from scratch" - Well, that's almost any academic language you find.
- "English phrases" - Well, that's Cobol. You know, cargo cult English. (laughter)
- "Text processing doesn't matter much" - Fortran.
- "Simple languages produce simple solutions" - C.
- "If I wanted it fast, I'd write it in C" - That's almost a direct quote from the original awk page.
- "I thought of a way to do it so it must be right" - That's obviously PHP. (laughter and applause)
- "You can build anything with NAND gates" - Any language designed by an electrical engineer. (laughter)
- "This is a very high level language, who cares about bits?" - The entire scope of fourth generation languages fell into this... problem.
- "Users care about elegance" - A lot of languages from Europe tend to fall into this. You know, Eiffel.
- "The specification is good enough" - Ada.
- "Abstraction equals usability" - Scheme. Things like that.
- "The common kernel should be as small as possible" - Forth.
- "Let's make this easy for the computer" - Lisp. (laughter)
- "Most programs are designed top-down" - Pascal. (laughter)
- "Everything is a vector" - APL.
- "Everything is an object" - Smalltalk and its children. (whispered:) Ruby. (laughter)
- "Everything is a hypothesis" - Prolog. (laughter)
- "Everything is a function" - Haskell. (laughter)
- "Programmers should never have been given free will" - Obviously, Python. (laughter).

How do you type it? With your keyboard.

The State of the Onion 10 [edit]

Taken from The State of the Onion 10

If there's a particular problem that Perl is trying to solve, it's the basic fact that all programming languages suck. Sort of the concept of original sin, applied to programming languages.
There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs.

The State of the Onion 11 [edit]

Taken from The State of the Onion 11 ("Programming is Hard. Let's Go Scripting").

Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady...
I started out as a BASIC programmer. Some people would say that I'm permanently damaged. Some people are undoubtedly right... But I'm not going to apologize for that. All language designers have their occasional idiosyncracies. I'm just better at it than most.
But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book. Then of course the professor announced we would be implementing our own language, called PL/0. After thinking about it a while, we announced that we were going to do our project in BASIC. The professor looked at us like we were insane. Nobody else in the class was using BASIC. And you know what? Nobody else in the class finished their compiler either. We not only finished but added I/O extensions, and called it PL 0.5. That's rapid prototyping.
Is LISP a candidate for a scripting language? While you can certainly write things rapidly in it, I cannot in good conscience call LISP a scripting language. By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals... And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them.
As a linguist, I don't think of Ada as a big language. Now, English and Japanese, those are big languages. Ada is just a medium-sized language.

Larry Wall Speaks at Google (2008) [edit]

Video on YouTube.

The only reason I've managed to run this open source project, is that I have learned to delegate even the delegation to other people. (final words of the video).

IRC [edit]

Note: On IRC, Wall uses the nickname "TimToady" (the phonetic equivalent of TIMTOWTDI, which are the initials of the Perl Motto "There is More Than One Way to Do it").

<TimToady>  TimToady's Lament: The pain in reign falls mainly in the 'splain.

Freenode's #perl6 on 26 February, 2007. Source.

Other [edit]

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.
- "The State of the Onion", perl.com, 2004-08-18
- In reference to the boxed screensaver that comes with xscreensaver.

...Then you start building things like the Berlin wall to keep people inside your community. In anthropological terms, that's tribalism. A tribal Perl programmer might say, "If you leave the Perl tribe to go and join the Python tribe, we will hunt you down, cook you, and eat you." Or if you join the Ruby tribe, you will explode. By and large, I am not in favor of tribalism. Except for my tribe, of course.
- ibid.

The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
- From the glossary of the first Programming Perl book.

The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other.
- Message-ID <20050516005559.GC26184@wall.org>, to perl6-language mailing-list.

There's really no way to fix this and still keep Perl pathologically eclectic.
- Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant, Programming Perl, third edition, section 3.10.

…I also discovered Larry's First Law of Language Redesign: Everyone wants the colon.
- "Apocalypse 1: The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good", perl.com, 2001-04-02

Larry's 2nd Law of Language Redesign: Larry gets the colon.
- "Apocalypse 5: Regular Expressions", perl.com, 2001-06-04

When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?
- "Perl, the First Postmodern Computer Language", perl.com, 1999-03-09

Jesse Vincent: My dog is Web 2.0. Prove me wrong.
Larry: Does your dog have a long tail?
Damian Conway: If you enjoyed these practices, find 245 more like this in this book.
Larry: Does your dog have a long tail?
- During sessions of YAPC::Asia::2006

Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.
- Amazon.com Interview: Larry Wall.

As for whether Perl 6 will replace Perl 5, yeah, probably, in about 40 years or so.
- "Developers can unwrap Perl 6 on Christmas", Infoworld, 2015-12-21

External links [edit]

scottpetry1973.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Wall

Easy Things Should Be Easy and Hard Things Should Be Possible

Quotes [edit]

Usenet postings [edit]

1990 [edit]

1991 [edit]

1992 [edit]

1994 [edit]

1997 [edit]

1998 [edit]

2003 [edit]

Source code [edit]

`cons.c` [edit]

`perl.c` [edit]

`stab.c` [edit]

`util.c` [edit]

`Configure` [edit]

Other files [edit]

Documentation [edit]

Public Talks [edit]

"2nd State of the Onion" [edit]

"3rd State of the Onion" [edit]

"Present Continuous - Future Perfect" [edit]

The State of the Onion 10 [edit]

The State of the Onion 11 [edit]

Larry Wall Speaks at Google (2008) [edit]

IRC [edit]

Other [edit]

External links [edit]

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Easy Things Should Be Easy and Hard Things Should Be Possible

Quotes [edit]

Usenet postings [edit]

1990 [edit]

1991 [edit]

1992 [edit]

1994 [edit]

1997 [edit]

1998 [edit]

2003 [edit]

Source code [edit]

cons.c [edit]

perl.c [edit]

stab.c [edit]

util.c [edit]

Configure [edit]

Other files [edit]

Documentation [edit]

Public Talks [edit]

"2nd State of the Onion" [edit]

"3rd State of the Onion" [edit]

"Present Continuous - Future Perfect" [edit]

The State of the Onion 10 [edit]

The State of the Onion 11 [edit]

Larry Wall Speaks at Google (2008) [edit]

IRC [edit]

Other [edit]

External links [edit]

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`cons.c` [edit]

`perl.c` [edit]

`stab.c` [edit]

`util.c` [edit]

`Configure` [edit]