Beginning Perl Programming: From Novice to Professional

© William "Bo" Rothwell of One Course Source, Inc. 2019

William "Bo" RothwellBeginning Perl Programminghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5055-6_1

1. Origin of Perl

William “Bo” Rothwell¹ 

(1)

San Diego, CA, USA

 

Perl was developed in 1987 by Larry Wall. It was created because the tools that were available to Mr. Wall at the time (sed, C, awk, and Bourne shell) didn’t provide the sort of functionality that he required.

Perl was initially called Pearl, but the name was quickly changed due to the fact that there was another language called Pearl at the time. Perl is a backronym (a constructed acronym created to fit an existing word) that stands for “Practical Extraction and Reporting Language.” Some programmers (typically those who don’t like Perl) claim ...