Programming Perl, 4th Edition

History Made Practical

In order to understand why Perl is defined the way it is (or isn’t), one must first understand why Perl even exists. So let’s drag out the old dusty history book…

Way back in 1986, Larry was a systems programmer on a project developing multilevel-secure wide area networks. He was in charge of an installation consisting of three VAXen and three Suns on the West Coast, connected over an encrypted, 1200-baud serial line to a similar configuration on the East Coast. Since Larry’s primary job was support (he wasn’t a programmer on the project, just the system guru), he was able to exploit his three virtues (Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris) to develop and enhance all sorts of useful tools—such as rn, patch, and warp.^[217] One day, after Larry had just finished ripping rn to shreds, leaving it in pieces on the floor of his directory, the great Manager came to him and said, “Larry, we need a configuration management and control system for all six VAXen and all six Suns. We need it in a month. Go to it!”

So, Larry―never being one to shirk work―asked himself what was the best way to have a bicoastal CM system, without writing it from scratch, that would allow viewing of problem reports on both coasts, with approvals and control. The answer came to him in one word: B-news.^[218] Larry went off and installed news on these machines and added two control commands: an “append” command to append to an existing article, and a “synchronize” command to keep the article numbers ...