Re: text equation

["L. S. Russell" <leslier@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Years ago (10 or so) I would of said, yes, Perl was a high level
> language, but I think with the advent of improved technology
> that a shift has occurred, and it is more of a mid level language.

What improved technology? You mean OOP? Well perl does OOP.
Are you talking about inheritance? Perl does inheritance.
It is high level languages like perl, python, tcl/tk (and to some small extent 
shell
languages) which are the driving force of the internet.

If you mean that you expect a high level language to write the code for you, 
perl,
python, tcl do that also, to a degree. For example the split() function in 
perl; takes
as arguments, a string, and a delimeter and returns a list (array) of all the 
items in
the string.
$test_str = 'mike:bob:bill:jim';
@test_ary = split($test_str, /\:/);
Just think how much code you would need to write in RPG, or the all powerful c 
just to
beable to do this same thing.

Or do you mean that a high level language is one that catches your errors and 
corrects
them, well using the -w option perl can even help there.

>
> I do agree, however, that my concept of a "high level language"
> is probably not what the rest of the computer community thinks
> of, so I should of probably said it was not a higher level language?
>
> Or perhaps it is just that I do not understand Perl enough to
> know of it's capabilities.
>

Perhaps you should do a little research.

>
> To me, the higher level the language the more machine code is
> produced for each line of source.  Optimized machine code too.
>

Yes, thats exactly what perl, python, basic, .... blah blah blah, do fo you. 
They
provide the menial code so us programmers can play quake.

>
> C is not considered a high level language (or it used to not be)
> because it was very close to the hardware.  C has gotten a bit
> higher level, but not as much as some.
>
> Assembly is extremely low level because there is almost a 1:1
> correlation between source code and machine code.
>
> Perl and Rexx, however, are somewhat hard for me to place,
> the same as Basic used to be, because they are interpreted.
> I really don't know where to place interpreted languages in the
> scheme of things.  Anything that is interpreted and not compiled
> to executable format, in my opinion, is a little bit lower level
> than if the same source was compiled.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jim Langston
>
> "L. S. Russell" wrote:
>
> > What do you mean perl is not a high level language?
> > Compared to asm, or even C perl is a high level language, right up there 
>with
> > RPG.
> > Perl will handle file input automatically;
> > open(FOO, './.bashrc');
> > @file_in = <FOO>;
> > close(FOO);
> > these three statements cause perl to read an entire file line by line into 
>an
> > array. Now if that is not a high level function I have never seen one. By my
> > definition of a high level language (one which removes the programmer from 
>menial
> > tasks such as handling file I/O, and provides math functions like abs(),
> > arctan(), sqrt() ...) perl fits the bill.
> > Yes, it is a high level language. Any language which provides built in 
>routines
> > for doing math, and string functions is a high level language. Perl is much 
>more
> > user friendly than C, perl even does its own garbage clean up.
>
> <SNIP>
>
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--
L. S. Russell Programmer/Analyst
Datrek Professional Bags, Inc.
2413 Industrial Drive
Springfield, TN. 37172
mailto:leslier@datrek.com
http://www.datrek.com
--


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