sobering observation, python vs. perl

Thu Mar 17 13:53:41 EDT 2016

On 17/03/2016 17:25, Charles T. Smith wrote:
> On 2016年3月17日 19:08:58 +0200, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

>> my $str = "I have a dream";
>> my $find = "have";
>> my $replace = "had";
>> $find = quotemeta $find; # escape regex metachars if present
>> $str =~ s/$find/$replace/g;
>> print $str;
>>>> with Python:
>>>> print("I have a dream".replace("have", "had"))

> Uh... that perl is way over my head. I admit though, that perl's
> powerful substitute command is also clumsy. The best I can do
> right now is:
>> $v = "I have a dream\n";
> $v =~ s/have/had/;
> print $v

I was going to suggest just using a function. But never having coded in 
Perl before, I wasn't expecting something this ugly:
sub replacewith{
 $s = $_[0];
 $t = $_[1];
 $u = $_[2];
 $s =~ s/$t/$u/;
 return $s;
}
Although once done, the original task now looks a proper language:
print (replacewith("I have a dream","have","had"));
-- 
Bartc