Perl for the XXI-imum Century

[nmg]

I don't know whether to applaud or be appalled - someone has written a module that enables you to write perl programs in Latin.

#! /usr/local/bin/perl -w

use Lingua::Romana::Perligata;

salve tum lacunam tum munde egresso scribe.

Comments

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

Can you translate the error message?

'tum' immaturum est ad versum V

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Roughly, yes. it means something like "',' unexpected at line 5"

For some reason, the interpreter is not reading 'salve' (imperative singular of salveo, to be well, translation 'greetings') and 'munde' (vocative singular of mundus, world, translation 'O world') as literal strings, but as syntax. You can sort of fudge it by breaking those words into smaller pieces:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Lingua::Romana::Perligata;

mund tum e tum lacunam tum salv tum e tum novumversum egresso scribe.

(which roughly translates as: "write to the way out 'mund' then 'e' then a space then 'salv' then 'e' then a newline)

I think that this is probably a key reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire. The lack of any punctuation to denote quotation made it difficult for them to make it clear to the Visigoths when they were being serious, and when they were being ironic. The resulting diplomatic fracas directly led to the sacking of Rome in 410 AD.