From: http://slashdot.org/yro/01/05/17/0238223.shtml

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved
with melting snowballs.
From: http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/04/02/wall.html

This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless,
someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it.
From: http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/04/02/wall.html

Save it for my unauthorized autobiography.
From: Marcel Grunauer

> In Perl How do I print the 22343.87 like this $22,232.87

First you subtract 111 from the number you'd like to print, then you
check perlfaq5 for "commify".
From: Abigail

perl -wle 'print "Prime" if (1 x shift) !~ /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/'
From: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/

$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=(
$m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^$d>>4^
$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^
(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval

cat /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILE_NAME | qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 | extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
From: Abigail

And just as you're under no obligation to publish your source code to
please me, I'm under no obligation to help you hide it.
From: Tom Christiansen

1. What is the possibility of this being added in the future?
In the near future, the probability is close to zero. In the distant
future, I'll be dead, and posterity can do whatever they like... :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what
you're up to.
From: Tom Christiansen

You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns? :-)
From: Abigail

The Internet Revolution was founded on open systems: an open system is one
whose software you can look at, a box you can unwrap and play with. It's
not about secret binaries or crippleware or brother-can-you-spare-a-dime
shareware. If everyone always had hidden software, you wouldn't have
1/100th the useful software you have right now.

And you wouldn't have Perl.

From: Tom Christiansen

Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone
to death with a loaded Uzi.
From: Tom Christiansen

"fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity (ado@bigcomm.gun.de)."

"Yes, but I did manage to increase the amount of virginity in the world
by that method."
From: Tom Christiansen

"I just hope I'm never promoted to the level of my incontinence."
From: Tom Christiansen

I hope to get Perl 5 out this summer, for certain values of summer.
From: Vladimir Alexiev

A quote from the recently completed book of Joseph Hall and Randal
Schwartz ( http://www.effectiveperl.com/intro.html ) that strikes me as
odd:

I don't use English. It's just too verbose for this little book.
Furthermore, English is not common practice among Perl
programmers, and scripts that use English suffer a speed penalty.
This is not to say that English is not useful, just that you won't
see it here.

Words to live by :)
From: Tom Christiansen

"Just because you're into control doesn't mean you're in control."
From: Tom Christiansen

last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:..)...(.*)/&&"'$1'"ge$1&&"'$1'"lt$2'
That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat... :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"It's easier to make up sayings people like to hear than sayings they
like to heed."
From: Gabor

But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when
you think you have good news.
From: Paul Joslin

What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards? :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"111% of crap is everything."
From: Charlie Stross

"Many computer scientists have fallen into the trap of trying to define
languages like George Orwell's Newspeak, in which it is impossible to
think bad thoughts. What they end up doing is killing the creativity
of programming."
From: Gabor

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. :-)
From: Doran L. Barton

"This may seem a bit weird, but that's okay, because it is weird."
From: Tom Christiansen

Just don't create a file called -rf. :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"A journey of a thousand miles continues with the second step."
From: Tom Christiansen

Q. Why is this so clumsy?
A. The trick is to use Perl's strengths rather than its weaknesses.
From: Tom Christiansen

"A good messenger expects to get shot."
From: Tom Christiansen

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality... :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"... an initial underscore already conveys strong
feelings of magicalness to a C programmer."
From: Tom Christiansen

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers. :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

: 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).
In the first pass, install perl. :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for
something, after all... :-)
From: Larry Wall

In article <5pratd6c9e.fsf@antelope.cs.rochester.edu>,
Jonas Karlsson wrote:
: (I actually tested it this time -- I'm sorry for not testing my
: assertion before posting my previous article - I die. My body
: decomposes into a pile of dust which is scattered by the four winds.
: A speck of the dust settles on a memory chip in Larry Wall's computer
: leading to spurious, impossible to track down errors in the new perl
: release, ultimately halting production completely. Bereft of a new
: version of Perl, sysadmins everywhere are unable to maintain their systems
: leading to the collapse of the World Wide Web and the Internet,
: ultimately causing the downfall of civilization as we know it. I am
: ashamed.)

Er, not to subject you to further shame or anything, but I believe the
original formula is supposed to end with "Oh, the embarrassment."

From: Tom Christiansen

"I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be
responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not
proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being
capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager... "
From: Tom Christiansen

``I do quarrel with logic that says, `Stupid people are associated with X,
therefore X is stupid.' Stupid people are associated with everything.''
From: Darren S. Embry

[Perl] gives you the STDERR filehandle so that your program can make
snide comments off to the side while it transforms (or attempts to
transform) your input into your output.
--- Larry Wall and Ronald L. Schwartz,
From: Tom Christiansen

"Don't wear rollerskates to a tug-of-war."
From: Tom Christiansen

"...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."
From: Tom Christiansen

"The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by
a word and a comma."
From: Tom Christiansen

(It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.)
Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.
From: Tom Christiansen

You know, by the time you get some with all this, the "Swiss Army
Chainsaw" is going to be more like a Swiss Army Tactical Nuke.... :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of
irrational discourse."
From: Tom Christiansen

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

There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me
of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or
I'm a Blit.

From: Tom Christiansen

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

From: Larry Wall

In article <3ge17o$o87@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU> tchrist@mox.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
: Tom Christiansen Perl Consultant, Gamer, Hiker tchrist@mox.perl.com
: If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good
: reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason. :-)
: --Larry Wall in <1992Jan17.005405.16806@netlabs.com>

Yeah, I keep saying that.

The trouble with being quoted a lot is that it makes other people
think you're quoting yourself when in fact you're merely repeating
yourself.

From: Tom Christiansen

"I think I'll side with the pissheads on this one."

From: Tom Christiansen

"The young think they are immortal, and are determined to prove
otherwise."

From: Tom Christiansen

The only reason [not to use] perl is that some sysadmins don't allow
software that they didn't pay for. By all means, let them send me
money if it makes them feel better. :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

"Sometimes I wish I could put an expiration date on my quotes."
From: Francesco Callari

"I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anybody it was an accident."
From: Nem W Schlecht

Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so
consider picking the most readable one.
Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate
to make 10 ways to do something. :-)
From: Tom Christiansen

I think I'm likely to be certified before Perl is... :-)

From: Tom Christiansen

"I'm sorry, but you just made me lose my sense of humor, which is deeply
regrettable."

From: Lars Balker Rasmussen

C++ is a ridiculously complicated travesty that few have the excess IQ
points to understand enough not to screw up massively.

From: Tom Christiansen

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
From: Tom Christiansen

Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is,
of course, living in a state of sin.
From: Gerben Vos

Perl: There's more than one way to do it.
Microsludge C++: There's only one way to do it, and we won't tell you which.

Other quotes