By using perl as a scripting language instead of a “traditional” shell, you can use much more C-like syntax without sacrificing functionality.

Perl is a messy, maddening programming language, the “duct tape of the internet.” But at least you can tell it was made by humans.

Scripting languages are the hot technology today for application and Web development -- no longer the backwater afterthought of the early days running in a pokey interpreter. Nor are scripting ...

It turns out there might be a closer connection between the two than you’d think, as a software engineer discovered that random paint splatters are actually valid Perl code in disguise.

To see how associative arrays work, we’re going to look at both the Korn shell and Perl, though only the newest version of the Korn shell (referred to as “korn93”) supports associative arrays.

Basically, use <B>open</B> to create a filehandle (in the appropriate mode -- e.g. read, write, append, whatever) and then pass that as the first argument to printf, then close the filehandle.