Perl

Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp.^[1]

Structurally, Perl is based on the brace-delimited block style of AWK and C, and was widely adopted for its strengths in string processing and lack of the arbitrary limitations of many scripting languages at the time.

Perl was originally named "Pearl", after the Parable of the Pearl from the Gospel of Matthew. Larry Wall wanted to give the language a short name with positive connotations; he claims that he considered (and rejected) every three- and four-letter word in the dictionary. He also considered naming it after his wife Gloria. Wall discovered the existing PEARL programming language before Perl's official release and changed the spelling of the name.

The name is normally capitalized (Perl) when referring to the language and uncapitalized (perl) when referring to the interpreter program itself since Unix-like file systems are case-sensitive. Before the release of the first edition of Programming Perl, it was common to refer to the language as perl; Randal L. Schwartz, however, capitalised the language's name in the book to make it stand out better when typeset. The case distinction was subsequently adopted by the community.^[5]

The name is occasionally given as "PERL" (for Practical Extraction and Report Language). Although the expansion has prevailed in many of today's manuals, including the official Perl man page, it is merely a backronym. The name does not officially stand for anything, so spelling it in all caps is incorrect and is considered a shibboleth (label of outsiders) in the Perl community.^[6] Several other expansions have been suggested, including Wall's own humorous Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.^[7] Indeed, Wall claims that the name was intended to inspire many different expansions