I find perl easy to learn because its like C syntax. is it worth learning?

Why don't you try it out since you say its easy for you . Perl definitely has its uses...same as any other languages.

Google says yes but, what do you guys/girls say.

it doesn't matter what we say. fans of Perl will say its worth it. haters of Perl would say otherwise. you need to find the answer to this yourself by actual hands on. so start with it already and stop wasting your time here.

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Personally I've found Perl one of the most ridiculous main stream languages out there. However, it has its uses so if you are willing to invest the time then go for it. Basically any language is worth learning and Perl is worth it, it's just that me and Perl don't get on. I hope you have a more favourable experience.

unless ( ) { } is neat. can be done in C also:

During my last work experience, we wrote tools for customers, using Perl, to parse huge log files (gigabytes in size), of course among other things. I believe its original purpose was to be able to handle large amounts of text well, which it seems to be able to do. I think it has grown into a much more general purpose language with many other nice features/capabilities also. I remember sometimes I would be trying to debug some log files, but any text editor I had would freeze due to the filesize. I wrote up an extremely small script, in an extremely small amount of time, to split the log files to smaller ones that the editors could manage. So, needless to say, its also great at ad-hoc things like that.

As hinted at above, whether a language is "worth learning" or not is kind of subjective. The answers you get will likely be biased to that person's experience--or lack of--with the language. I, too, found it straightforward to learn (at least the syntax), because it is pretty forgiving, intuitive, and seems similar to combinations of other languages.

Alternatively, I could be cliché-ish and say its always a good idea to learn.

"C" syntax is the least relevant Perl feature. At all, your Perl scripts will look/function very poorly if you try to write in Perl like in "C". I.e. under the hood and in its mentality Perl is very different from "C".

And Perl is definitely worth learning. "C" with the help of LLVM folks is finally catching up - now "C" too has closures.

Only thing I can add to this: Use the tool that fits the job. The more tools you have (and know how to use) the easier the job gets. And, if important to you, it also increases your "market value".

Perl definitely has its values, creating reports to name one of the most obvious.

I already wrote a perl script to seperate each file from the output of 'ls' and put a F: in front of it.

use glob, opendir()/readdir() , while(<*.*>) , etc instead of calling external ls. perldoc perlopentut

why is that a "value" of Perl, considering other languages like Ruby,Python, PHP etc also capable of producing reports ?

In my opinion (who else's opinion could I express...?), Perl, when used for the purpose it is intended, can result in very high productivity. Parsing and otherwise handling large volumes of text is certainly at the center of that purpose. If you grock regular expressions, it will feel very comfortable, as well. Almost any problem that looks like I could solve with sed or awk, I just reach for Perl, because I know I can solve it with that.
I prefer to use Perl as a CGI over PHP, but that's just me. For any kind of programming that will probably end up in a customer's hands, I would instinctively not use Perl, but again, that's probably just me.
I do some system management and similar activities in my work, and I doubt that a single day goes by when I don't write at least a little Perl; often one-liners on the commandline.

--- rod.

well, IMO as well, so can other languages... in the context of Perl "values", one of them i can think of is CPAN and its vast arrray of modules. Other than that, practically they all can do the same thing.

I'm seriously biased, but I've been using Perl extensively for 13 years now. I think it's the most flexible and useful language I've ever used.

I'll still opt for C if I need serious speed, or Javascript for web frontends, but everything is Perl these days.

As a side note - you can write REALLY unreadable Perl. I'd recommend against it - C-ish Perl is still perfectly readable 10 years later, while bizarre Perlisms tend to get confusing withing months.