It’s hard to believe I’ve managed to do web pages, CGI scripting, and Unix programming for almost eight years and gotten away without learning Perl. Sure, I’ve edited existing Perl scripts here and there (after you learn enough computer languages, you develop the ability to read and understand most programming languages without any prior knowledge) but I’ve not yet actually sat down and written any scripts from scratch. Which is kind of strange because Perl has all kinds of features that I love to use elsewhere—for example, regular expressions. Well, that just won’t do anymore; I need a script to extend GreyMatter’s archive listings, so I’m off to learn Perl.