Hour 14. Using Modules

Perl, as you've noticed, is an extremely flexible language. It deals with files, text, math, algorithms, and other issues normally found in any computer language. A lot of the language is dedicated to special-purpose functions. Regular expressions are a core part of the language, and they're very important to the way that Perl is used, although many languages do just fine without them. Perl's handling of external programs (backticks, pipes, and system from Hour 11, "System Interaction") is extensive, but again, many languages don't handle them at all.

The temptation with any language is to include anything useful to the core of the language itself. Being so inclusive can create a very large, hard-to-use language. For example, some language designers feel that support for access to the World Wide Web should be included in the core of the language. It's a useful idea, but not everyone needs that feature. And if 10 years from now the Web is less important than it is today, the decision has to be made to remove that support, and a lot of already-written software will be broken.