Perl : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: Perl	by the DICT Development Group
2 results for Perl
From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
Perl /perl/ n. [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall (<>, author of `patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles {awk}, but is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of `sed(1)' and shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of the {languages of choice}, and it is by far the most widely used tool for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of Unix programming. Though Perl is very useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or {elegant}; people who like clean, spare design generally prefer {Python}. See also {Camel Book}, {TMTOWTDI}.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]:
Perl A {high-level} programming language, started by {Larry Wall} in 1987 and developed as an {open source} project. It has an eclectic heritage, deriving from the ubiquitous {C} programming language and to a lesser extent from {sed}, {awk}, various {Unix} {shell} languages, {Lisp}, and at least a dozen other tools and languages. Originally developed for {Unix}, it is now available for many {platforms}. Perl's elaborate support for {regular expression} matching and substitution has made it the {language of choice} for tasks involving {string manipulation}, whether for text or binary data. It is particularly popular for writing {CGI scripts}. The language's highly flexible syntax and concise regular expression operators, make densely written Perl code indecipherable to the uninitiated. The syntax is, however, really quite simple and powerful and, once the basics have been mastered, a joy to write. Perl's only {primitive} data type is the "scalar", which can hold a number, a string, the undefined value, or a typed reference. Perl's {aggregate} data types are {arrays}, which are ordered lists of {scalars} indexed by {natural numbers}, and hashes (or "{associative arrays}") which are unordered lists of scalars indexed by strings. A reference can point to a scalar, array, hash, {function}, or {filehandle}. {Objects} are implemented as references "{blessed}" with a {class} name. Strings in Perl are {eight-bit clean}, including {nulls}, and so can contain {binary data}. Unlike C but like most Lisp dialects, Perl internally and dynamically handles all memory allocation, {garbage collection}, and type {coercion}. Perl supports {closures}, {recursive functions}, {symbols} with either {lexical scope} or {dynamic scope}, nested {data structures} of arbitrary content and complexity (as lists or hashes of references), and packages (which can serve as classes, optionally inheriting {methods} from one or more other classes). There is ongoing work on {threads}, {Unicode}, {exceptions}, and {backtracking}. Perl program files can contain embedded documentation in {POD} (Plain Old Documentation), a simple markup language. The normal Perl distribution contains documentation for the language, as well as over a hundred modules (program libraries). Hundreds more are available from The {Comprehensive Perl Archive Network}. Modules are themselves generally written in Perl, but can be implemented as interfaces to code in other languages, typically compiled C. The free availability of modules for almost any conceivable task, as well as the fact that Perl offers direct access to almost all {system calls} and places no arbitrary limits on data structure size or complexity, has led some to describe Perl, in a parody of a famous remark about {lex}, as the "Swiss Army chainsaw" of programming. The use of Perl has grown significantly since its adoption as the language of choice of many {World-Wide Web} developers. {CGI} interfaces and libraries for Perl exist for several {platforms} and Perl's speed and flexibility make it well suited for form processing and on-the-fly {web page} creation. Perl programs are generally stored as {text} {source} files, which are compiled into {virtual machine} code at run time; this, in combination with its rich variety of data types and its common use as a glue language, makes Perl somewhat hard to classify as either a "{scripting language}" or an "{applications language}" -- see {Ousterhout's dichotomy}. Perl programs are usually called "Perl scripts", if only for historical reasons. Version 5 was a major rewrite and enhancement of version 4, released sometime before November 1993. It added real {data structures} by way of "references", un-adorned {subroutine} calls, and {method} {inheritance}. The spelling "Perl" is preferred over the older "PERL" (even though some explain the language's name as originating in the acronym for "Practical Extraction and Report Language"). The program that interprets/compiles Perl code is called "perl", typically "/usr/local/bin/perl" or "/usr/bin/perl". Current version: 5.005_03 stable, 5.005_62 in development, as of 1999-12-04. {Home (http://www.perl.com/)}. {Usenet} newsgroups: {news:comp.lang.perl.announce}, {news:comp.lang.perl.misc}. ["Programming Perl", Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Sebastopol, CA. ISBN 0-93715-64-1]. ["Learning Perl" by Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA]. [{Jargon File}] (1999-12-04)