Perl vs Ruby

Differences Between Perl vs Ruby

Perl is a general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language originally created by Larry Wall in 1987. Initially, it was created to be a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier and faster. Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It runs on a variety of platforms like Windows, Mac and various versions of Unix.

Ruby is an object-oriented, reflective, dynamic, general-purpose programming language designed and developed during the 1990s by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan.

Perl language borrows its features from programming languages like C, Shell script, AWK, and sed. It is multi-paradigm, functional, imperative, object-oriented, procedural and event-driven.

Ruby takes the concept of Object-Oriented Programming to its limits. In Ruby, everything is an object, including global variables. Classes and modules are objects, and functions and operators are the methods of objects. Thus, Ruby becomes more powerful when combined with Functional programming and the use of lambdas.

Perl is a very stable and cross-platform programming language. It works efficiently with markup languages like HTML, XML etc. It is open-source software, licensed under GNU General Public License (GPL).

Ruby being Object Oriented is highly influenced by languages like C++, Java, and Perl. It is highly preferred for web development and functional programming, which was the focussed area by the Ruby community from the get-go. Ruby has become much more diverse since its inception, but it has not yet reached the level of diversity that Perl has.

Although Perl is an older language, it is a very solid language that works well in web development. Perl is savvy by design. When it was being introduced in the 1980s, it was highly popular during its initial phase, and there were multiple reasons behind it. C is a low-level language that took multiple lines of code for even the simplest of processes during those times. Also, Perl was portable, unlike C. Thus, Perl became a huge hit in the 1990s and became the first choice for web-based business during the e-commerce rise.

Ruby can be used for non-web-based scripting and programming, but many learning resources focus on Rails and web development. Ruby’s features and elegance has become one of its top-selling points, and at the same time, it can become hard for the programmer to track down bugs. The syntax of Ruby is similar to that of Perl, but it takes Object Oriented features to their limits.

E-commerce giants like Amazon were written in Perl. And when it comes to system administration, it is equally efficient as with building complex enterprise software. Perl is still an asset for back-end architecture. One of Perl’s biggest advantages is CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network), which is a collection of thousands of Perl software modules and libraries of packaged code written and maintained by their own authors.

Head to Head Comparison between Perl and Ruby

Below is the top 8 comparison between Perl and Ruby:

Key Differences Between Perl and Ruby

Following is the Differences Between Perl and Ruby:

1. Perl being an Object-Oriented language, has to be interpreted, whereas Ruby is a highly Object-Oriented programming language that is dynamic and reflective is frequently compiled, and then output from the compilation is interpreted.
2. Perl library of code, CPAN is incomparable, has a huge set of libraries available whereas Ruby is although it comes along with a decent number of libraries, still need to catch up with Perl.
3. Perl is an ideal choice for system administration work as well as the web development task, whereas Ruby is highly suitable for the traffic-heavy application.
4. Perl has a very good number of libraries when it comes to supporting regular expression, whereas Ruby’s support for regular expression is decent as compared to Perl.
5. Perl is most often used in CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripting along with C for web servers and hence used widely in the world of server technology, whereas Ruby is strong in meta-programming, which allows creating a fabulous product like Vagrant.
6. Perl has a community called “Perlmonks”, which is the best among language support, whereas Ruby has a Google group as a support community.
7. Perl being an older giant, has a vast number of users, whereas Ruby is gaining popularity among new developers and is catching up with Perl.
8. Perl slightly resembles CeeLanguage, whereas Ruby borrows a little from Small talk too.
9. Perl 5 is fewer Object-Oriented, although Perl 6 has a very good Object-Oriented support, whereas Ruby is a highly Object-Oriented language.
10. Perl’s support for Unicode is much stronger; it supports Unicode properties, whereas Ruby’s support for Unicode is not as strong as Perl; its encoding is more explicit.

Perl and Ruby Comparison Table

Below is the detailed Comparison of Perl and Ruby.

BASIS FOR COMPARISON	Perl	Ruby
Paradigm	Perl 5 is less Object-Oriented	Pure Object-Oriented language
Frameworks	Django	Catalyst
Arrival	Initially released in 1987	Released in 1994
Libraries	A sizable number of libraries available	Overtaken Perl in terms of libraries
Community	Perlmonks is one of the best programming language community	Google group or forum support Ruby
Syntax	Support multiple variable types	Has only one variable type
Characteristics	Run incredibly fast and perform well	Ruby scripts run decent enough
Applications	Ideal for web application development and system administration	Rapidly prototype application that is traffic-heavy

Conclusion

Perl is a pretty old language; it started its journey way back in 1987, whereas Ruby arrived in 1994. Thus, both Perl vs Ruby languages is carrying their own set of merits and demerits. Perl has excellent community backing it up, which is one of the biggest advantages of Perl. There is a vast number of libraries available with Perl suitable for all kinds of requirement. Being an old horse in the market, Perl’s documentation is also rich and better. Its huge lead over a long time ensured that most of the libraries are well documented, and there are tons of example available online.

Ruby is catching up at a decent pace and constantly evolving. One can write any Perl code in Ruby with improvements. From the ground-up, it provides an Object-Orientation feature that helps in keeping large code bodies maintainable. Writing Object-Oriented code in Perl can be painful; in Ruby, a breather. Meta-programming, better support for code generation is available with Ruby.

One can enjoy writing Ruby code more than writing Perl code and vice-versa. In the last few years, Ruby has closed many gaps in Perl in areas of libraries, documentation, and community. Both Perl or Ruby have their own set of areas that is better suitable for a specific requirement. It finally boils down to requirement and the programmer’s capability.

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