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Q42478

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".

AI overview

Perl is a programming language created in the 1980s that's widely used for tasks like processing text and data, as well as system administration and web development. It matters because its flexible design and powerful text-handling capabilities made it influential in early internet development and remain useful for many practical computing tasks today.

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Key facts

Programming language.name: Perl
Programming language.logo: perl-logo.svg
Programming language.paradigm: Multi-paradigm
Programming language.designer: Larry Wall
Programming language.developer: Larry Wall
Programming language.typing: Dynamic
Programming language.influenced: CoffeeScript, Groovy, JavaScript, Julia, LPC, PHP, Python, Raku, Ruby, PowerShell
Programming language.license: Artistic 1.0 or GNU General Public License version 1 or any later version
Programming language.wikibooks: Perl Programming
Programming language.latest release version: 5.42.1
Programming language.latest preview version: 5.43.8
Programming language.influenced by

Article

32 sections

Contents

Name and logos
History
Early versions
1990s
2000–2020
Perl 6 and Raku
Perl 7
Design
Philosophy
Features
Syntax
Implementation
Ports
Performance
Applications
Community
Yet Another Perl Conference
History
Reception
Locations
North America
Europe
Israel
Russia & Ukraine
Australia
South America
Brazil
Asia
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Perl was developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions. Perl originally was not capitalized and the name was changed to being capitalized by the time Perl 4 was released. The latest release is Perl 5, first released in 1994. From 2000 to October 2019 a sixth version of Perl was in development; the sixth version's name was changed to Raku. Both languages continue to be developed independently by different development teams which liberally borrow ideas from each other.