Re: text equation

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.

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.

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

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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