"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."

"Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality..."

"Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature"

"Perl programming is an *empirical* science!"

"Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl."

"Real programmers can write assembly code in any language."

"The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors."

"There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity..."

"There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it."

"Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly..."

"What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards?"

"You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?"

"All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory..."

"Besides, including <std_ice_cubes.h> is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there..."

"Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally."

"Hey, I had to let awk be better at *something*..."

"If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that..."

"In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is."

"Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something."

"And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is."

"Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing."

"Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call."

"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."

"I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get."

"I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes..."

"Piet van Oostrum: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG? Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature."

"(To someone at New York University) If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York."

"If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally..."

"I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl."

"I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious."

": But for some things, Perl just isn't the optimal choice. (yet)"

"Odd that we think definitions are definitive."

"As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but the truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle."

"If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them."

"The whole history of computers is rampant with cheerleading at best and bigotry at worst."

"I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially."

"I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude."

"Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."

"Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is."

"Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as 'Unix'."

"Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi."

"You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources."

"What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"

"Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time."

"...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head."