Perl is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Larry Wall. Originally designed for text processing and report generation, it became the “duct tape of the Internet” in the early web era.
Origins
Larry Wall, a linguist and programmer, created Perl in 1987 for processing text files. He combined features from C, shell scripting, awk, and sed into a practical tool that could do all these tasks in one language.
Design Philosophy
Perl embraces a distinctive philosophy:
- TIMTOWTDI: “There’s More Than One Way To Do It”
- Make easy things easy, hard things possible
- Natural language inspiration: Perl’s syntax mimics natural language patterns
- Context sensitivity: Operators behave differently in different contexts
Key Features
Perl pioneered features now common in scripting languages:
- Regular expressions: First-class pattern matching
- Associative arrays: Hash tables built into the language
- References: Perl’s take on pointers
- CPAN: Comprehensive Perl Archive Network for modules
CGI Era Dominance
Perl powered the early web. Most CGI scripts were written in Perl, and it was the go-to language for web development until PHP and later frameworks emerged.
Legacy
While Perl’s popularity has declined, its influence persists:
- Regular expressions spread to virtually all languages
- Scripting language concepts became mainstream
- CPAN inspired package repositories like npm and PyPI
- Perl 5 continues active development