Perl

Perl is a tool for computers.

A man named Larry Wall made it. He wanted to help make reports.

It is very good at reading text. Some people call it the duct tape of the internet. This is because it helps many things work together. It can do many different jobs. It can even help with money or science. A camel is a famous symbol for it. Many people use it every day to build things.

Perl is a special tool for computers.

People use it to write code. Larry Wall created it in 1987. He wanted to make report processing easier. Perl is very good at reading and changing text. This makes it a great tool for many jobs. Some people call it the "duct tape of the Internet." This is because it helps different parts of the web work together. It is also called a "Swiss Army chainsaw." This means it is very strong and can do many things.

Perl 5 is a very important version. It came out in 1994. It added new parts called modules. These modules let people add new features easily. There is also a place called CPAN. This is a big library for Perl. It holds over 211,850 modules. Many different authors wrote these parts.

A camel is a famous symbol for Perl. You can see a camel on the cover of a famous book. This book is often called the "Camel Book."

Perl is a special way to talk to computers using code. It is a high-level language, which means it is designed to be easy for people to read and write. Many people call it a "glue language." This is because it can connect different parts of a computer system together. Some even call it the "duct tape that holds the Internet together." It is also known as a "Swiss Army chainsaw" because it is very powerful and flexible.

Perl is used for many big jobs. People use it for finance, network programming, and even studying biology. It is very good at reading and changing text in large amounts.

How Perl works is quite interesting. It is an interpreted language. This means a program reads the code and follows the instructions right away. One of its best features is text processing. It can look at long strings of words and find exactly what you need. It uses something called regular expressions to do this very well. This makes it easy to search through data without hitting limits on how long the text can be.

Because the code can be very short, it is highly expressive. This allows a programmer to do a lot of work with just a few lines.

A man named Larry Wall created Perl in 1987. He was working as a programmer at a company called Unisys. He wanted to make it easier to process reports on Unix systems. He originally wanted to call the language "Pearl." However, he found an existing language named PEARL. To avoid confusion, he dropped the "a" from the name.

The first version was released on December 18, 1987. Over the years, the name changed from lowercase to capitalized. Perl 4 was released in March 1991. This version became very famous because a helpful book was published at the same time.

Perl has many important versions and milestones. Perl 5 was released on October 17, 1994. It was a major rewrite that added modules. Modules are like extra tools that people can add to the language. On October 26, 1995, a huge library called CPAN was started. CPAN holds over 211,850 modules written by more than 14,324 authors.

Another big change happened with Perl 6. For a long time, it was being developed as a new version. Eventually, the name for this new language was changed to Raku. Both Perl and Raku are still being worked on today.

Many people recognize Perl by its famous symbols. A dromedary camel is an unofficial symbol for the language. This comes from a famous book called "Programming Perl." Many people call it the "Camel Book."

The Perl Foundation also uses an onion as a symbol. This is a funny play on words for a "pearl onion." In 2024, a new camel logo was made by a group of developers. This new logo represents the community of people who use and love Perl. It helps show the connection between the code and the people who write it.

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, and dynamic programming language. It was designed to be highly expressive, meaning programmers can write short code to perform complex tasks. This quality allows the source code for a given algorithm to be highly compressible. Because it can connect different systems together, it is often called a "glue language." In 1998, it was famously described as the "duct tape that holds the Internet together." This nickname refers to its widespread use and its perceived inelegance. Some users also call it the "Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages" due to its immense flexibility and power.

As an interpreted language, Perl works by having a program read the code and execute the instructions immediately. One of its most vital mechanisms is text processing. Perl uses powerful regular expression and string parsing abilities to manipulate text. Unlike many contemporary Unix command line tools, Perl does not have arbitrary data-length limits. This allows it to handle massive amounts of information efficiently. It also borrows features from other languages like C, sh, AWK, and sed to enhance its capabilities. These tools allow it to function effectively for system administration, network programming, finance, and bioinformatics.

Perl has moved through several distinct stages of development. The language began with early versions focused on text manipulation. Perl 2, released in June 1988, introduced a better regular expression engine. Perl 3, released in October 1989, added the ability to support binary data streams. A major shift occurred with Perl 5, which was released on October 17, 1994. This version was a nearly complete rewrite of the interpreter. It introduced important features like objects, references, lexical variables, and modules. Modules are significant because they allow programmers to extend the language without changing the core interpreter.

The history of Perl is tied to its creator, Larry Wall. He began working on the language in 1987 while employed as a programmer at Unisys. He released version 1.0 on December 18, 1987. Wall originally intended to name the language "Pearl" to give it positive connotations. However, he discovered an existing language named PEARL before the official release. To avoid confusion, he dropped the "a" from the name. While not an official acronym, people use backronyms like "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" to describe it. Wall also included "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister" in the official manual page.

A major milestone in the Perl ecosystem was the creation of CPAN. The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network was established on October 26, 1995. It serves as a massive repository for Perl modules. As of the records, CPAN carries over 211,850 modules in 43,865 different distributions. These modules were written by more than 14,324 different authors. The network is mirrored in more than 245 locations worldwide. This massive collection of tools is a primary reason for Perl's continued utility in professional fields.

The development of Perl 6 represents a long and complex chapter in its history. Work on a new version began around the year 2000. This involved 361 Request for Comments (RFC) documents to guide the design. Early design documents were called "Apocalypses," which were later turned into "Synopses." For many years, Perl 6 existed only as a description of a language. In 2005, Audrey Tang began work on Pugs, the first concerted effort to make Perl 6 a reality. Eventually, the name for this sixth version was changed to Raku. Today, Perl 5 and Raku are developed independently by different teams.

Perl is also defined by its unique visual symbols and community icons. A dromedary camel is the unofficial symbol for the language. This image comes from the "Camel Book," which is the common name for the publication "Programming Perl." O'Reilly Media owns the trademark for the camel but licenses it for non-commercial use. The Perl Foundation also uses an onion as an alternative symbol. This is a visual pun on the term "pearl onion." In 2024, a new camel logo was published by a small group of developers. This new logo is intended to represent both the language and its community.