Perl is good at what its designed for - text manipulation and report
generation.
And as they say - its also known as the Swiss-Army Chain Saw of languages.

To answer the question how is Java and the OO-languages better than Cobol
and the procedural languages.
You'll have to get into the Object-oriented way of thinking
(and it was not an easy paradigm shift for me)
Java 'grows on you' (some say 'like a mold')
at first its ok, because the syntax is easy enough.
Then you get into inheritance and Polymorphism and the other OO concepts
its a different way of thinking about programming.

google "Thinking in Java" or "Thinking in C++" by Bruce Eckel for a little
more insight into the OO-way.



"John Smith" wrote in message
...
Hal:

LOL! Years ago I can remember looking at perl and asking, "WHAT THE H3LL
IS
THAT?"--now it looks like my grocery list, simple--but I get your point...

However, how is java or "C++" any better, after cobol, basic and
pascal--then seeing Dennis Richies' little project (A, B and "C"), I
asked,
"WHAT THE H3LL IS THAT?" grin

... however, point well taken...
Mr. Dennis Richies REAL homepage:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/

Warmest regards,
John