🚀 go-pugleaf

> Would someone please post or e-mail me a reference for Python?

Seeing as I started this with mentioning Python, here's what I know
about it.  It was advertised in a few news groups (it definitely
appeared in comp.archives) and the source was posted to alt.sources.
Anyway here's part of the post.

From Guido van Rossum <guido@cwi.nl> (the author of Python)

> I have placed tarred, compressed versions of Python and STDWIN on the
> anonymous ftp archive server "wuarchive.wustl.edu", in pub, under the names
> python0.9.1.tar.Z and stdwin0.9.4.tar.Z.  This includes official patch#1
> for Python.  I will also place the Postscript of the manuals there under
> the names pythondoc1.ps.Z and pythondoc2.ps.Z.

I now have the python documentation and have just finished reading it
(about ten minutes ago).  As I haven't read much about Perl and Icon,
I'm not in a position to comment on how it compares yet.

> Generally, my guess is that you would find Icon better for complex
> string analysis tasks that don't fit into neat regular expressions,
> or for programs that use extracted information in complex ways.
> Perl looks better for the jobs that it was designed to handle.

I'm specifically after a language which allow flexible extraction of
information from multiple files and the creation of subsequent files.
I currently use awk for most of these tasks, but the built in line
length limits, not being able to define my own functions and terrible
error messages are a pain%.

> <Insert admitted Icon bias here.>

Well if I can show my bias here, I'd forget all about Perl, AWK,
Python, Icon ... etc. if Scheme had things like regexps.  Granted I
could implement them myself (e.g. an extension to ELK), but I'm trying
not to invent yet another language but use one that is already
defined.

Stephen J. Bevan			bevan@cs.man.ac.uk

% Some, if not all, of these may be solved by using gawk fron GNU
  rather than the awk that comes with SunOS