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About this quote

What does it mean?
Historically Tcl stored everything as strings, while Perl avoided that from the start.
In plain terms
Tcl used string storage; Perl used typed storage early on.
What can you take from it?
Design choices affect data handling.

Where it applies

  • performance tuning
  • legacy code

Putting it to work

  • choose appropriate data types
  • consider language defaults

Questions to consider

  • How do storage decisions impact program speed?

Another view

String storage can simplify parsing but hurt efficiency.

More from Larry Wall

  1. Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers.

    Permalink to quote #135
  2. Just don't make the '9' format pack/unpack numbers... :-)

    Permalink to quote #137
  3. It's certainly easy to calculate the average attendance for Perl conferences.

    Permalink to quote #134

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