Forget shell scripts!

Held at YAPC 2008 in Chicago, IL, slides are available here.

For typical system administration tasks, it's tempting to whip up a quick shell script. Resist this temptation. Use Perl instead. For everything.

If your scripts are created with reuse in mind, you'll end up with much better code that's easy to maintain and can be plugged in anywhere -- even in places you haven't imagined in the first place. This talk shows how to make your Perl scripts almost as short as shell scripts, while giving you reusability, structuring and logging for free.