Re: [tlug] Alternatives to sed + awk

[Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>]

On 9 March 2011 05:46, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:

> But pretty much everything out there is Turing-complete (Steve Baur
> once wrote a complete BASIC interpreter in Bourne shell)

I'd be more impressed if he'd written a Bourne shell in BASIC. ;)

> [I]t's not clear what "powerful" means.

To me, "powerful" means "expressive, and gets out of my way when I
want to be a little naughty", e.g.

class String
  def bar; reverse end
end

my_string = 'foo'
my_string.instance_eval { def baz; reverse }

puts 'Ruby is insane' if foo.bar.baz == foo


The latest PragPub magazine has a pretty cool take on the language wars:

http://www.pragprog.com/magazines/2011-03/punk-rock-languages

As does Paul Graham:

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

-- 
Cheers,
Josh