Perl

Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below), is an interpreted procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall. Perl borrows features from C, shell scripting (sh), awk, sed, and (to a lesser extent) many other programming languages.

Name

Perl was originally named "Pearl", after "the pearl of great price" of Matthew 13:46. Larry Wall wanted to give the language a short name with positive connotations and claims he looked at (and rejected) every three- and four-letter word in the dictionary. He even thought of naming it after his wife Gloria. Wall discovered before the language's official release that there was already a programming language named PEARL and changed the spelling of the name.

Related Topics:
Matthew - PEARL

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The name is normally capitalized (Perl) when referring to the language and uncapitalized (perl) when referring to the interpreter program itself since Unix-like filesystems are case sensitive. (There is a saying in the Perl community: "Only perl can parse Perl.") (Before the release of the first edition of Programming Perl it was common to refer to the language as perl; Randal L. Schwartz, however, forced the uppercase language name in the book to make the name stand out better when typeset. The case distinction was subsequently adopted by the community.) It is not appropriate to write "PERL" as it is not really an acronym, although several backronyms have been suggested, including the humorous Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. The spelling of PERL in all caps is therefore used as a shibboleth for detecting community outsiders.

Related Topics:
Programming Perl - Randal L. Schwartz - Acronym - Backronym - Shibboleth

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Practical Extraction and Report Language has prevailed in many of today's manuals, including the official Perl man page. It is also consistent with the old name "Pearl": Practical Extraction And Report Language.

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The Camel Symbol

Perl is generally symbolized by a camel, which was a result of the picture of camel book publishers O'Reilly Media chose as the cover picture of Programming Perl, which consequently acquired the name The Camel Book. O'Reilly owns the symbol as a trademark, but claims to use their legal rights only as a measure of protecting the "integrity and impact of that symbol" http://perl.oreilly.com/usage/. Use of the symbol for non-commercial purposes is allowed and a Programming Republic of Perl logo (see above) is provided for this purpose.

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