Why is perl in the base system
Assume you need a script language, because writing everything in C is cumbersome.
What are the choices ?
- you need something under and acceptable licence, so python is out.(Artistic Licence is “close enough”);
- you need something that builds everywhere, so python is out (hard to build without dynamic libraries, that was vax…);
- you want a modicum of security, so shell and tcl and php are out.
- awk would kind of work, except it’s not that readable, and it wouldn’t scale up to some of the things we use perl for.
Perl constituted a great compromise back in the day I chose it to replace pkg_add. It still IS a great compromise, and it’s not THAT large compared to other pieces.