Differences Between Perl vs Python
The human mind is judgmental by nature so whenever it gets to choose one thing among many then it compares various features of items and then chooses one which is closer to its requirement. For example, a student who is pursuing his engineering degree of Information Technology or Computer Science often asks his seniors which language he should choose Java, C#, C++ or C to make a good career with it.
When two languages come in the market in short interval of time then professionals start comparing them on the basis of syntax, feature, ease of use and environment supported. Perl is older than Python but not so much. Perl was developed to deal with text process that is related to reporting stuff at that time on UNIX machine while Python was a result of a successor of programming language ABC.
Both the languages have following features in common:
- Both were developed to target UNIX machine.
- Both are interpreted not compiled.
- Both are OO (Object oriented) but Python is ahead of Perl when we talk about OOPs.
- Both are open source in nature and you can modify it according to your need.
- Both have vast community support over the internet.
Head To Head Comparison Between Perl vs Python (Infographics)
Below is the top 8 comparison between Perl vs Python
Key Differences Between Perl vs Python
Despite having many similarities, both Perl and Python have many differences as well; we will look into these difference between Perl and Python in details:
1. Perl, we can say “Practical Extraction and Report Language” but it is not official on the other hand Python is named after famous artist of his time “Monty Python”.
2. Perl was invented by Larry Wall in 1987 while Python by Guido van Rossum in 1989.
3.Python: First of all there is only one way to do get things done but if there is another way too then it will replace the existing.
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For example: in Python 2.0 to print message command is as:
Print “Hi this is a text message from Python 2.0”
But when they introduced Python 3.0 then the same thing can be done as
Print(“Hi this is a text message from Python 3.0”)
Perl: If there is another way to do the thing then include it also i.e. not to replace existing but to add new way as well. (For example: See way to write if statement in comparison section)
4. Perl is considered for text processing which helps in reporting while Python is now a general purpose language and currently being used in many fields.
Perl vs Python (Comparison Table)
Following is the Comparison table between Perl vs Python
| BASIS FOR
COMPARISON |
Perl | Python |
| Command Line | If you are a Window user then after installing Perl (from http://strawberryperl.com with 64 and 32 Version)you can open a common window which will look like this C:>perl -e <you can write Perl code here> If you are Linux or Unix user then you can get the same thing like this $perl -e <perl code goes here> |
For window user after installing Python from Python.org in 32 or 64 bit version then code prompt will look like this to run the python code from python script file. C: >python script.py (Here script.py is python file which contains code) For Linux user, the same prompt will look like this $python script.py |
| Whitespaces | Perl does not care about whitespaces | Python deals with whitespaces and will give syntax error if whitespaces are not according to Python |
| Comment | Statement started with # will be considered as comment.
# This is an Inline comment in Perl |
# This is an inline comment in Python Three inverted comma is also can be used as documentation or comment “”” This is for python and can be used in documentation as well as in comment “”” |
| Statement End | In Perl Statement ends with; | While in Python; is not required to end the program statement as it deals with whitespaces. |
| Way of writing code | 1: Perl provides freedom to write same code in different style. For example take if statement You can declare If statement in following ways: if ($var1 != $var2) { print “Both are not same\n”; } unless ($var1 == $var2) { print “Both are same\n”; }———————————————– print “Both are same\n” unless $var1 == $var2 ; print “Both are not same\n” if $var1 != $var2 ;———————————————– $var1 == $var2 || print “Both are same\n”; $var1 != $var2 or print “Both are not same\n”; 2: Statement starts and ends with curly braces { }if (($var1 != $var2) {print “hello world”;} |
1: Python do not believe as such and force to write code in its own Pythonic way. For if statement you get things like this: if(var1 == var2) : print(“Both are same”) 2: Python uses indentation for the same (as you can see above if statement) |
| Regular Expression | Part of the language which makes text processing easy and short. |
Need to deal with functions and method for regex |
| Easier to learn | In comparison to Python, Perl is not easy to learn. |
Python is easy to learn |
| File Extension | .pl
For example myDocument.pl |
.py
Example: myFile.py A subset of computer science where the study of data is done by using different methods and technologies |
Conclusion – Perl vs Python
We saw some of the major differences between Perl and Python the two languages but many of us believe that everything has its own advantages and disadvantages and we do not go black and white. When you are familiar with any language, have earned a lot then that becomes easy for you.
As we can say Perl provides you to include different way to do the things and on the other hand Python restrict you but in easier way and this is the reason Python is gaining popularity in all aspect while Perl is still in use and still has vast community support but when we see the things worldwide we found Python is dominating with vast number of packages that supports in all computing environment.
So can we say Perl is useless nowadays? The answer is No. Perl is still in use in many of the Linux supporting systems in a real-time scenario where we require dealing with text processing a lot. But when you ask me for career perspective then I will suggest going ahead with Python because it is being used in many modern technologies like Machine Learning and Data Science field, the reason for this is simplicity and ease of use.
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