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From: Gordon Etly on 16 Apr 2008 00:32
John W. Krahn wrote:
> Gordon Etly wrote:
>> J�rgen Exner wrote:
>>> "Gordon Etly" <get(a)bentsys.com> wrote:
>>>> What is so wrong with adding to that list,
>>>>
>>>> "PERL" refers to "Practical Extraction and Report Language" ?
>>> Is there a particular reason, why you prefer that expansion over
>>> Larry's own suggestion "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister"?
>>
>> It's not about what -I- prefer, but what is written in 'perldoc
>> perl'. I do know the document that statement comes from, and I
>> understand what you are getting at, but in the end it's what is
>> written in 'perldoc perl' that I'm looking at.
>
> There are some papers at the supermarket that have articles about the
> existence of Bigfoot. It's written down so it must be true. There
> are some books that say that the moon landings were faked. It's
> written down so it must be true. There are some books that claim
> that the earth was created in six days. It's written down so it must
> be true.

That's nice, but what the heck does any of that have to do with the
discussion? How can you compare a tabloid to the official documentation
of a programming language??

--
G.Etly


From: J�rgen Exner on 16 Apr 2008 02:57
"Stephan Bour" <sbour(a)niaid.nih.gov> wrote:
>There is a certain logic in
>rewriting `Practical Extraction and Report Language` as `PERL` which is a
>common form of writing a term whose characters each have a documented
>meaning, which would appear to be the case.

Sure. Nobody is arguing otherwise.

Unfortunately this argument is not applicable to the name of the
programming language that is discussed in this NG, because the language
was named 'Perl', then afterwards(!) the term 'Practical Extraction and
Report Language' was found as a backcronym, and there is no rule or
established custom that the capitalization of a proper name has to be
changed just because now there is a backcronym available.

If you call your friend Joel 'Jolly Old Excentric Lamer' that doesn't
mean that he has to write his name in all caps, either.

jue
From: John W. Krahn on 16 Apr 2008 02:58
Uri Guttman wrote:
>>>>>> "JWK" == John W Krahn <someone(a)example.com> writes:
>
> JWK> There are some papers at the supermarket that have articles about the
> JWK> existence of Bigfoot. It's written down so it must be true. There are
> JWK> some books that say that the moon landings were faked. It's written
> JWK> down so it must be true. There are some books that claim that the earth
> JWK> was created in six days. It's written down so it must be true.
>
> damn you!! you have ruined my decade by exposing my beliefs to
> ridicule. i will have to start using PERL from now on!

Sure, you can get the latest version at:

http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Acme-Inline-PERL-0.01/


John
--
Perl isn't a toolbox, but a small machine shop where you
can special-order certain sorts of tools at low cost and
in short order. -- Larry Wall
From: Uri Guttman on 16 Apr 2008 03:22
>>>>> "JWK" == John W Krahn <someone(a)example.com> writes:

JWK> Uri Guttman wrote:
>>>>>>> "JWK" == John W Krahn <someone(a)example.com> writes:
JWK> There are some papers at the supermarket that have articles
>> about the
JWK> existence of Bigfoot. It's written down so it must be true. There are
JWK> some books that say that the moon landings were faked. It's written
JWK> down so it must be true. There are some books that claim that the earth
JWK> was created in six days. It's written down so it must be true.
>> damn you!! you have ruined my decade by exposing my beliefs to
>> ridicule. i will have to start using PERL from now on!

JWK> Sure, you can get the latest version at:

JWK> http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Acme-Inline-PERL-0.01/

damn you x 2!! now you just gave more ammunition to the PERL crowd. they
will use the existance of a cpan module with PERL in its name as proof
that it is an acceptable form of the name. too bad they will be blind to
the root namespace of this module.

uri

--
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From: Jim Cochrane on 16 Apr 2008 05:47
On 2008-04-16, Gordon Etly <get(a)bentsys.com> wrote:
> Charlton Wilbur wrote:
>>>>>>> "GE" == Gordon Etly <get(a)bentsys.com> writes:
>>
>>> Yes, we all know that, and that is not the point I have tried
>>> to make.
>>
>>> What is so wrong with adding to that list,
>>
>>> "PERL" refers to "Practical Extraction and Report Language"
>>> ?
>>
>> It does not reflect the usage patterns of the core Perl developers or
>> Perl experts.
>
> I understand that, honestly I do, but that is not what I was asking.
> Quite simply, 'perldoc perl' gives an expansion, and my question is why
> it should be wrong to use "PERL" as a short hand for that expansion,
> since the expansion is found in the official docs?

IMO, it's fine to use PERL as an acronym for "Practical Extraction
and Report Language", but that (PERL) is not the name of a programming
language; rather, it is simply an acronym for
"Practical Extraction and Report Language", which is a description of
the perl executable that shows up via the perl man pages.

Just as it would not make a lot of sense to call gcc (or the C language)
GPCCC (i.e., an acronym for the description that shows up at the top of
the man page:
gcc - GNU project C and C++ compiler
), it also does not make sense to call Perl (or perl) PERL (i.e., an
acronym for the description that shows up at the top of the man page:
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
).

But, IMO, it's not very useful to come up with an acronym (i.e., PERL)
for a description of the perl executable (shown via 'man perl'), or for
any (description of an) executable, for that matter.


--

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