Larry Wall quotes - page 8

I was trying not to mention backtracking. Which, of course, means that yours is 'righter' than mine, in a theoretical sense. (Larry Wall)
Well, sure, I explicitly mentioned 'vtables' last time I brought this up. But a single pointer is fairly paltry, as tables go. View quote
Larry Wall
If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee. View quote
Larry Wall
People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You'd think that would also be obvious. Instead, we're taught to express ourselves. View quote
Larry Wall
Dan Smith: I've tried (in vi) 'g/[ a-z] \n[ a-z]/s//_/'...but that doesn't cut it. Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution). Larry Wall: In the first pass, install perl. View quote
Larry Wall
We didn't put in ^^ because then we'd have to keep telling people what it means, and then we'd have to keep telling them why it doesn't short circuit. :-/. View quote
Larry Wall
I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl. View quote
Larry Wall
I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes... View quote
Larry Wall
On the plus side, it's a lot easier in general to find /usr/include than cpp. View quote
Larry Wall
And C was good at something I like to call manipulexity, that is the manipulation of complex things. While shell was good at something else which I call whipuptitude, the aptitude for whipping things up. View quote
Larry Wall
It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend. (Larry Wall)
Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo. View quote
Larry Wall
Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches. View quote
Larry Wall
Well, that's more-or-less what I was saying, though obviously addition is a little more cosmic than the bitwise operators. View quote
Larry Wall
Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config. sh. View quote
Larry Wall
Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list is starting to resemble a feature list. You must be human or something. View quote
Larry Wall
The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors. View quote
Larry Wall
Remember though thatTHERE IS NO GENERAL RULE FOR CONVERTING A LIST INTO A SCALAR. View quote
Larry Wall
The following two statements are usually both true: There's not enough documentation. There's too much documentation. View quote
Larry Wall
"tt>str-> str_pok |= SP_FBM; /* deep magic */s = (unsigned char*)(str-> str_ptr); /* deeper magic */. View quote
Larry Wall
"tt>/* And you'll never guess what the dog had *//* in its mouth... */. (Larry Wall)
That gets us out of deciding how to spell Reg[ eE] xp?|RE... Of course, then we have to decide what ref $re returns... View quote
Larry Wall
There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs. View quote
Larry Wall
I think $[ is more like a coelacanth than a mastadon. View quote
Larry Wall
I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude. View quote
Larry Wall