rbrcurtis on Ask HN: Why do people consider Ruby better than Perl or vice versa?

Comment on Ask HN: Why do people consider Ruby better than Perl or vice versa?parent

Can you explain the "makes perl look like java" comment? how does perl look like java?

I'm kind of kidding, but Ruby lets you do things more elegantly than you can in Perl, and with less verbosity (hence the Java comment). It's really a syntax issue that I'm talking about, but it matters a lot for readability and language usability.

Perl:

my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana';

# sort them into an array

my @y = sort split(' ', $x);

# do we have more than 2 elements? (just a random test)

if (scalar(@y) > 2) {

  print "we've got ", scalar(@y), " elements!\n";

} else {

  print "insufficient elements. fail.\n";

}

Ruby:

x = 'Apple Carrot Banana'

y = x.split(' ').sort

if (y.size > 2)

  puts "we've got #{y.size} elements!"

else

  puts 'insufficient elements. fail.'

end

Ruby just seems more elegant to me, more programmer-friendly. YMMV.

chromatic 15y

A modern Perl programmer might write something much more elegant:

    my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana';
    my @y = $x->split(' ')->sort;

    if (@y > 2) {
        say "we've got ${\@y->size} elements!";
    } else {
        say "insufficient elements. fail.";
    }

perigrin 15y

And one that doesn't like autobox would say:

    use 5.12.2; # enables modern features
    my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana';
    my @y = sort split ' ', $x;

    say @y > 2 ? "we've got ${\scalar @y} elements!" 
               : 'insufficient elements. fail.';

Not everything needs to be an Object. Not every call needs to be a method call. Some people think better with procedures, some people think better with objects.

One of the reasons I personally like Perl is I can use which ever one is appropriate to the problem domain.

Edit: forgot the `sort` call.

colomon 15y

Or ever-so-slightly lighter Perl 6 version:

    my $x = 'Apple Carrot Banana';
    my @y = $x.words.sort;

    if @y > 2 {
        say "we've got {@y.elems} elements!";
    } else {
        say "insufficient elements. fail.";
    }

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