HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mpeppler@itf.ch (Michael Peppler)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Sybperl memory usage workaround (was: Sybperl eats memory like mad)
Date: 6 Apr 92 09:29:39 GMT
Organization: ITF Management SA, Geneva, Switzerland


I've looked into the memory allocation scheme used by Perl & Sybperl
when calling &dbnextrow. The problem lies in the fact that if you code

while(@dat = &dbnextrow)
{
   blah, blah, blah
}

Perl never realizes that the @dat array is to be freed at the bottom of
the loop. Hence, if you have a query that returns a great many rows
there will be a *lot* of memory allocated to the process.

There is a workaround, however:

Create a subroutine which in turn calls &dbnextrow and stores the
result in a local variable:

sub getrow
{
    local(@dat);

    @dat = &dbnextrow;
} 

and call this routine instead of &dbnextrow. This will keep the memory
usage of your process stable.

I ran a query usign this technique on a table of 290000 rows and the
process size (as reported by top) was stable at 976 k.

This technique *might* induce some memory allocation thrashing (ie
allocating/freeing on each pass through the loop), but it seemed to
work OK.

I will try to see if there is something that I can do to make this
behaviour transparant, though.

I hope this helps other Sybperl users as well :-) !

Michael
-- 
Michael Peppler	             mpeppler@itf.ch {uunet,mcsun}!chsun!itf1!mpeppler
ITF Management SA            BIX:   mpeppler                         
13 Rue de la Fontaine        Phone: (+4122) 312 1311  
CH-1204 Geneva, Switzerland  Fax:   (+4122) 312 1322
From: jreece@sousa.intel.com (John Reece)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Damn fool question re Camel Book
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:03:32 GMT
Reply-To: jreece@stravinsky.intel.com
Organization: Intel - Information Technologies

In article <1992Apr5.162822.29839@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>, em21@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Eben Moglen) writes:
> 
> I have written a fair amount of perl in the last several months, but always
> without reading the so-called Camel Book, which I see referred to here
> frequently.  I appreciate that this should be FAQ, but doesn't seem to be:
> can I ftp this book from somewhere?

It's "Programming in Perl", by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz.  
Published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. as part of their "Nutshell"
series.  It's called the camel book because there's a picture of 
a camel on the from  (The nutshell people like to illustrate their covers
with non-sequiters).


-- 

John Reece			
Intel spokesman?  Not!
From: c21dsg@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Dianne Glickfield)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: write and something other than STDOUT
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:05:50 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Delco Electronics Corp.

In article <1992Apr13.185439.9671@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com> c21dsg@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Dianne Glickfield) writes:
>
>    open(OUTFILE,'>> $outfile') || die "Could not open $!\n";
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Never mind, I found the culprit.  :s/\'/\"/g   :-)

-- 
Dianne Glickfield
EDS/Delco Electronics	Internet:  c21dsg@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com
700 E. Firmin   CT10E	UUCP:	deaes!c21dsg
Kokomo, In  46902	Phone:	(317)451-0904   GMNet: 8-322-0904
Xref: sparky comp.lang.perl:3125 comp.sys.hp:5173
From: brown@cs.utk.edu (Lance A. Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Problem compiling perl on hp9000/730 running hp-ux 8.05
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:51:58 GMT
	<1992Apr12.165927.25478@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com>
Organization: Univ of TN, Knoxville - CS Department
NNTP-Posting-Host: duncan.cs.utk.edu
In-reply-to: moconnor@pms704.pms.ford.com's message of 12 Apr 92 16:59:27 GMT


In article <1992Apr12.165927.25478@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com>,
moconnor@pms704.pms.ford.com (Mike O'Connor) writes:

> Help is on the way.

> Under HP-UX 8.05, you have two solutions:

> 1.  Compile in debug mode (cc -g)
> 2.  Upgrade to HP-UX 8.07

> Under HP-UX 8.07, the caveat is:  Use HP's own malloc rather than
> perl's.  I would recommend doing this under 8.05 as well, but I don't
> recall if I HAD to do that to get perl to work.

I was able to compile Perl 4.0 patchlevel 19 on an HP 9000/720 running
HP-UX 8.07 with optimization on and using the system malloc instead of
perl's malloc.  The executable passed all the tests.

Lance
--
Lance A. Brown  <brown@cs.utk.edu>
  The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data,
     and the Data is Life -- The Player's Litany
                                 from _The Long Run_ by D.K. Moran
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: marcush@leland.Stanford.EDU (Marcus Edward Hennecke)
Subject: How optimized is eval?
Keywords: eval, optimization, pointers
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 21:21:17 GMT

Hello out there,

I have two questions regarding eval and pointers and especially
efficient and fast code. Note that the answer to both questions might
be: "eval is very optimized, don't bother to search for a better
solution".

I have a loop in which I eval a string. The string is constant
throughout the loop, but it may change during the lifetime of the
script. Is there a way of optimizing the compilation of the string?
I.e., I want eval to compile the string only once at the beginning of
the loop. Since eval may be called several hundred times during the
execution of the loop, it should be possible to save a lot of time
there. Or is the compilation process so optimized that it is
negligible? Currently, I solve the problem by enclosing the string in
a subroutine:

              eval "sub evalstr {$string}";

Then I can "execute" the string by calling the subroutine. However,
this saves only little time (I used `times' to measure), probably due
to some overhead caused by calling the subroutine. Is there a better
way to do this?

Related to this is my second question. I want to fill the contents of
a string into a number of variables of which I neither know the names
nor their number. To be precise: I have the names of the variables
stored in an array, so I can determine the number and names during
runtime. The string to be filled into the variables is divided into
fields, separated by commas, so that the split function can easily get
me the data stored in the string. So far, I fill the variables using
eval:
      $" = ", \$";
      eval "( \$@FNAMES ) = split(/\$AFS/, \$_)";

where @FNAMES contains the names of the variables (field names) and
$AFS contains the field separator. Again I would like to avoid the
eval expression since it is in a loop. I somehow hoped to do this with
pointers, but I am stuck here. The problem is that I don't know how
many variables there are going to be, in which case I could write
(assuming that @ptrs contains pointers to the variables):

 # before the loop
 $" = ", *";
 eval "\@ptrs = ( *@FNAMES )";   # fill @ptrs with the pointers
 local(*ptr0) = $ptrs[0];
 local(*ptr1) = $ptrs[1];
      ...
 local(*ptrn) = $ptrs[n];

 # inside the loop
 ( $ptr0, $ptr1, ..., $ptrn ) = split(/$AFS/o, $_);
 # (works only if I know n at compile time)

Is there a simple solution that I just don't see? Or is this a very
tricky problem?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Marcus
marcush@leland.stanford.edu
From: potter@watson.ibm.com (David Potter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: How do you use stderr in perl?
Keywords: stderr, fileno, file descriptor
Date: 17 Apr 92 14:34:45 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM

I am not a perl programmer, but i have some perl scripts that I 
maintain. Recently I added some output to a c program that is 
written to stderr (fd 2).  One place where this program is used
is a ksh script, and redirecting that output is easy -- 2>....

In the perl script where that program is used it is not so easy. 
The line of perl that opens the pipe running my program looks like this:

open (AFILE, "/path/cmd -a <$input 2>/dev/null |") || die "msg"

The problem is apparrently that fd 2 is not stderr. On page 145 of
the camel book, there is a caution that you can not rely on fd's 0, 1 and 2
being stdin, stdout and stderr. So i tried STDERR in place of 2. 
That did not work -- would not compile.  So i tried $stderr=fileno(STDERR).
That did not compile either.  There must be a reiable why to use 
stderr, Can some one point me to the right section of the camel book? 
Thanks. 
David Potter


-- 
*                tuktusiuriagatigitqingnapin'ngitkiptin'nga, David Potter
From: drw@kronecker.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: novice q: finding unique words in a list
Date: 14 Apr 92 16:43:22 GMT
	<1992Apr7.222504.5891@cs.ruu.nl> <JGD.92Apr8175246@kodiak.acl.lanl.gov>
	<18376@ector.cs.purdue.edu> <mcook.702824404@mrc.dev.cdx.mot.com>
	<18400@ector.cs.purdue.edu> <1992Apr10.230915.3918@cs.ruu.nl>
Organization: MIT Dept. of Tetrapilotomy, Cambridge, MA, USA

In article <1992Apr10.230915.3918@cs.ruu.nl> henkp@cs.ruu.nl (Henk Penning) writes:
   Also, even a one-line sort would not be an argument for removing sort.
   It is clear that 'sort' should be a primitive in Perl.

Eh?  Why is it "clear" that sort should be a primitive?  I've always
considered the ability to perform an operation with a short section of
code one of the principle reasons that the operation should *not* be
primitive.  (There are, of course, reasons that can override this,
mostly frequency-of-use and clarity questions.)

Dale Worley		Dept. of Math., MIT		drw@math.mit.edu
--
Mozart is just God's way of making the rest of us feel insignificant.
Whenever you have just composed a piece of music you think is
particularly good, it is humbling to think that Mozart probably wrote
a better one when he was nine years old.	-- David W. Barber
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: chare@unilabs.uucp (Chris Hare)
Subject: help with cacheout.pl
Organization: None: Just Me, Chris Hare
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 02:06:16 GMT

Maybe I'm being stupid.  (No comments on that please.)
Can someone please lend me a hand with using cacehout.

I think I see that it looks for a filename in the call ot it 

		$ret = &cacheout( "file" );

and that it returns a file handle to write to.

If the file is already open, should it not return the previously assigned 
file handle?

Thanks - any useful examples would be nice.

-- 
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Chris Hare				UUCP : uunet.ca!choreo!unilabs!chare
SCO Authorized Instructor		Choreo Systems Inc., Ottawa Canada
*** STANDARD DISCLAIMER APPLIES ***	DOMAIN: chare@choreo.ca
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Highlit fields in 'format' fields
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Realtime Development, Colorado Springs, CO
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 16:24:04 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of garyb@abekrd.co.uk (Gary Bartlett):
:This  may have come up before; if it has will someone please forward any
:previous discussion/fixes about it to me.
:I  am  using  format/write  for a report I am generating and I would now
:like to highlight certain fields using the man/more/less `convention' of
:using backspace sequences,
:
:	e.g.	Bold text:	B\bBO\bOL\bLD\bD
:		Underlined:	_\bU_\bn_\bd_\be_\br
:
:Strings that have had this highlighting applied to them triple in length
:but  the  space  taken up on screen remains the same (and certain pagers
:convert  this  information  into  different fonts).  Unfortunately, perl
:does  not  take into account the length on screen of these fields (which
:may  or  may  not  be a good thing) and so the following two results are
:seen.   Firstly, if the highlit field is longer than the field width the
:field  is  truncated  and secondly the following fields on the same line
:end up shifted to the left due to the backspaces.


:I  would  really appreciate a temporary fix for this and would hope that
:this might be supported in a future release of Perl.

For now, postprocess your output and add the bold and underline 
stuff afterwards.  Maybe Larry will support it directly someday.

--tom
From: bates@wingra.stat.wisc.edu (Douglas M. Bates)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: syperl or Syperl?
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:55:08 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Statistics Dept., U. of Wisconsin - Madison

In discussing the use of the Sybase database system, someone mentioned
using syperl, a version of perl with support for Sybase.  I was not
able to contact them later to find out more.  I can find oraperl
through Archie but have not found any references to syperl or Syperl.
Can anyone help me locate this?
--
Douglas Bates                            bates@stat.wisc.edu
Statistics Department                    608/262-2598
University of Wisconsin - Madison
From: watson@carssdf.UUCP (- Self Empl. Sys.Integrator)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: type glob N/G under SCO 3.2.4
Date: 9 Apr 92 01:54:27 GMT
Organization: John Watson (Self Employed System Integrator)

Has anyone else had a problem re-compiling under SCO 3.2.4 (or other) and
found that type glob, aka pass by name, suddenly doesn't work?

If you have this problem, the test "big" will start failing at test 62.

John Watson
Xref: sparky comp.lang.perl:3145 comp.sys.hp:5194
From: jhd@irfu.se (Jan D.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Problem compiling perl on hp9000/730 running hp-ux 8.05
Date: 14 Apr 92 07:29:12 GMT
Organization: Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden

In article <BROWN.92Apr12225158@duncan.cs.utk.edu> brown@cs.utk.edu (Lance A. Brown) writes:
>
>In article <1992Apr12.165927.25478@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com>,
>moconnor@pms704.pms.ford.com (Mike O'Connor) writes:
>
>> Help is on the way.
>
>> Under HP-UX 8.05, you have two solutions:
>
>> 1.  Compile in debug mode (cc -g)

Both +O1 and -O will work under 8.05, although cc will fall back to +O1
on some files. I haven't tried +O3 but I don't think there will be
any trouble.

>> 2.  Upgrade to HP-UX 8.07
>

To get the (buggy) automounter? :-) There is really no big difference
between 8.05 and 8.07 when compiling perl is considered. Granted the
compiler produces somewhat better code under 8.07 but it's marginal.

>> Under HP-UX 8.07, the caveat is:  Use HP's own malloc rather than
>> perl's.  I would recommend doing this under 8.05 as well, but I don't
>> recall if I HAD to do that to get perl to work.
>
Don't use HP:s 8.05 malloc. It will work under most cases but it bombs
sometimes. More important, DON'T LINK IN -lmalloc. In 8.07 -lmalloc has
turned into an empty library, so it's OK to include it.
In fact, -lndir and -lnet that Configure finds are also empty.

8.07 malloc is OK, but test's I made show that perl's malloc is faster
(between 30 and 100 %) when it comes to allocating a lot of (small) blocks
in different sizes. The HP malloc is more space effective though.
Depends on what you wan't really, space or speed.

However, there hasn't been a perl (since 3.0 at least) that hasn't worked
with perl malloc. There has been trouble with HP malloc from time to time.

	Jan D.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: narayan@aravali.everest.tandem.com (Pankaj Narayan)
Subject: Writing and reading from /tmp files -PIPES ?
Reply-To: narayan@aravali.everest.tandem.com (Pankaj Narayan)
Organization: Tandem Computers Inc., Cupertino CA
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 23:14:08 GMT

If I want to do this in  one script:
   read input line by line
  for each line, process it and write a line to a /tmp file

  in second  pass , read line by line from the /tmp file and
  process it, and write  to the final (result) file.

 I would like to get rid of the /tmp file altogether. Seems to be a place
that I could use pipes. But the problem is that I am piping back data to
code in the same script. How would I do it ?
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pankaj Narayan			Email: narayan_pankaj@tandem.com
Tandem Computers			Voice: 408 285 6047 (work)  
19333 Vallco Pkwy, Loc 3-06		Voice: 408 243 5459 (home)
Cupertino, CA 95014-2599		Fax:   408 285 7079
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: abledsoe@sdf.lonestar.org (Al Bledsoe)
Subject: Re: Proposal: Interactive Perl Tutorial
Organization: sdf Public Access UNIX, Dallas--unrestricted free shell access
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 05:25:46 GMT

In article <ktu9k9INNssc@male.EBay.Sun.COM> me@anywhere.EBay.Sun.COM (Wayne Thompson) writes:
>Quite a while back I decided to write an interactive perl tutorial.
>But my job kept getting in the way ;-). Since I still have a job,
>I'm proposing that we spec. out such a beast and farm out the modules.
>I have developed a framework toward that end that might serve. It's
>a hypertext subsystem written for curseperl. Any thoughts? Any takers?
>
>Wayne


Wow!  Working with the 'Workstattion Wizard' himself, I think I met
you at AIX Expo, ... sure, man, farm me out -- whatcha got???

abledsoe@sdf.lonestar.org  ..!uunet!convex!egsner!sdf!abledsoe
		the LoneRanger is still alive!!!
From: pete@egh-qc.uucp (Pete Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Retrieving elements of an associative array in order.
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:44:57 GMT
Organization: Surgical Materials Testing Lab (SMTL)


I'd like to be able to retrieve the elements of an associative array
in the order in which they've been defined:


I have an array such:
	
%menu=(
	"quit","Exit",
	"about","About SMTL",
	"refdb","References Database",
	"stabdb","Stability Database",
	"dcarddb","Dressing Data Cards Database",
	"strixhelp","Help on using the Databases"
       );
@subs=keys %menu;      

And I use :
      
    for ($i=0 ; $i <= $#subs; $i++) {
	print "  $i) $menu{$subs[$i]}\n";
    }

to print out a menu.  (the key of the array is eval'd later on to call
the subroutine associated withtha menu item)

I'd like the menu to be printed in the order in which I define the elements.

Any ideas chaps ? (I've checked the FAQ and Camel book).

Pete
-- 
--
Pete Phillips,                      TEL    :  0656-652166 (Direct)
Deputy Director,
Surgical Materials Testing Laboratory,
Bridgend General Hospital,          
Bridgend,                           UUCP   :  uknet!egh-qc!pete
SOUTH WALES,  CF31 1JP              DOMAIN :  pete@egh-qc.co.uk
=== "A man is only as stupid as the woman who tells him what to do." ===
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: merlyn@iWarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Subject: Re: I need to set up an array of file pointers.  No can do, so far.
Reply-To: merlyn@iWarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 18:52:49 GMT

In article <cluther.703187699@morticia>, cluther@morticia (Clay Luther) writes:
|     $line = <$FILEPTRS[$i]>;       ## This does not work  
[...] 
| while (<$FILEPTRS[$i]>) { print; }
| 
| also doesn't do anything.
|
| Have I just found a problem with perl?  That is, the inability to store
| file pointers in an array?  Or have I not examined the problem deeply enough?

You can store them in an array, but the syntax for an indirect
filehandle requires a simple scalar, not an array reference.  Try:

	$fh = $FILEPTRS[$i];
	$line = <$fh>;

That works just fine, and is even documented. :-)

$fh = STDOUT; print $fh "Just another Perl hacker,"
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Intel: putting the 'backward' in 'backward compatible'..."====/
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
From: jmay@ctp.com (Jason May)
Subject: perl-mode for emacs?
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 12:44:07 GMT
Organization: Cambridge Technology Partners


Has anyone implemented a 'perl mode' for emacs?  Ideally, this would
recognize files with a '.pl' suffix (currently recognized as Prolog files)
and set up indentation defaults much like C-mode, except that comments
are shell style using '#' instead of C-style '/* */'.

Thanks in advance,

Jason
(jmay@ctp.com)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Help: searching, translating chars.
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Realtime Development, Colorado Springs, CO
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 15:13:27 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of ccechk@nuscc.nus.sg (Heng Kek):
:Hello,
:	Here are 2 questions from a novice Perlite:
:
:- Question 1:
:What is the quickest code to translate a given string to one
:which has a capitalised first letter?  (the 'string' is actually
:a word.)  For e.g. 'january' or 'JANUARY' or 'jANuarY' or
:'JaNUaRy' should translate to 'January'.

Quickest to write or quickest to execute?  This seems to come
out on top for both:

    $string = "\u\L$string";

Another way is:

    $string =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
    substr($string, 0, 1) =~ tr/a-z/A-Z/;

:- Question 2:
:When doing a pattern search, is it quicker to match a shorter
:pattern than a long one?  For e.g. if a searched line is:
:"the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" 
:will '/nly/' match faster than '/falls mainly on the/'?

Shorter strings match faster than longer ones, but it really
depends a lot on what you're looking for, what you're looking
at, and how easily your pattern can fail (or succeed).

Remember also that studying can make a difference when you're doing 
many compares against the same string.

Both these questions can really only be best answered through 
some very simple timings using the "times" function.  

    ($u, $s) = times;
    # now run code strategy #1, usually in a loop
    ($nu, $ns) = times;
    printf "%8.4fu %8.4fs\n", ($nu - $u), ($ns - $s);

    # and repeat for different coding strategies

--tom
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: forrie@morwyn.uucp (Forrie Aldrich)
Subject: mail-server
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 14:38:08 GMT
Organization: Vision Graphics - Dover, NH - USA
X-Bytes: 534

I was recently informed that Larry Wall had written some type of a 
mail-server in perl, and it was available... somewhere.  Could
someone tell me where to get it (or email it to me)?  Thanks...

-- 
           -----------        Forrest Aldrich         -----------
           -------     morwyn!forrie@unhtel.unh.edu       -------
           ----                                              ---- 
           --        VISION GRAPHICS -- Dover, NH - USA        --
           ------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Perl for commercial software?
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Realtime Development, Colorado Springs, CO
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 17:49:14 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of bernd@iss.nus.sg (Bernd Nordhausen):
:
:By now we all now what a great language perl is. However, I would like to 
:hear whether people are using Perl to write commercial software.
:
:I am in contact with a software company to do some development work for them.
:When I suggested to use Perl they were extremely reluctant. As a commerical
:company, they do not want to give out any source code or scripts.
:
:So I would like to hear whether any commercial software has been developed in
:Perl, and in what form it has been distributed.
:
:Or is that people use perl only to develop prototypes that are then recoded
:in C or some other compiled language?

Convex uses perl for its install and upgrade scripts, internal test suites
and a great deal of internal support software, and some sysadmin tools.
The stuff that goes to customers is of course distributed in source form.

--tom