Welcome to Perl
Perl was developed by Larry Wall in 1987 while working for System Development Corporation/Burroughs/Unisys because he needed it. Larry is an interesting person. His father and grandfather were preachers. He was planning on being a missionary, so he studied linguistics. It shows through in Perl.
“Perl” stands for:
- “pearl of great price” (Matthew 13:46)
- “Practical Extraction and Report Language”
- “Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister”
Licenses:
- Dual Licenses
- Artistic License
- GNU General Public License
Why Perl?
- Ubiquitous
- Widely used
- System Administration
- Network Programming
- CGI Scripts
- Glue/Duct Tape
Simple Run with Simple Output
A program can be as simple as:
- print (“I like you.”);
- To execute: perl prog1
- or
- #!/usr/bin/perl
- print (“I like you.”);
- NOTE: The parenthesis after the print function are not required, but often improve clarity.
Details
- The print function doesn't add a new line, so use “\n”.
- In a simple string w/o any special characters, either single or double quotes work fine. However, special characters like “\n” are blocked by single quotes.
- Commas are needed with multiple lines.
- See programs under perl/1stprogdir.