Having spent the better part of the last three weeks working on a system with very weird requirements and a VERY specific set of tools available to implement this change in, I have found myself neck deep in Perl code. The requirements changed multiple times throughout the process, causing much strife for my newly budding perl skills. What started as a nice way of browsing through file archive contents, has now turned into a full on perl cluster#$#$##$. I mean a full on perl dream.
I am not at the point yet where I can really knock on Perl too much. It has allowed me to get what I needed done, and the community of people surrounding the language have done well in creating a network of documentation and how-tos that made the project possible. The moment of Zen for me on this project, was when I realized that I would need to utilize a Hash table of Hash tables in order to represent the data I was working with. Now, in the world of perl I am sure this is no big deal. I am pretty sure that it is not that big of a deal in the whole world of programming in general. I am sure the Perl wizard reading this article is thinking to himself, “I used a hash of hashes of hashes just yesterday you n00b.” Well to that wizard, I tip my cap. Enough said, read this article below, for a good laugh at Perl’s expense.
http://www.underlevel.net/jordan/erik-perl.txt