Perl for C Programmers

Time Adjustment

Perl is not the first language that comes to mind when you say “number crunching.” After all, the math in Perl is slow and inexact. You have much better control over your numbers if you use C or C++.

But it turns out that most number crunching applications don’t do all that much math. Instead, they spend a lot of time reading the input and parsing it, and a lot of time formatting the output with a little number work in the middle.

Perl is excellent for the beginning and end of this process. And if the middle (the numbers) is small, it can be an ideal language for the job.

One of my hobbies is horology (horology is the study of time measurement and the making of clocks). I have a number of antique clocks around that I am constantly ...