Outline of Perl

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:

Perl – high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, multi-paradigm, dynamic programming language. Perl was
originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report
processing easier.[1] Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular
amongst programmers. Larry Wall continues to oversee development of Raku. Note that Perl and Raku are
receiving ongoing development, therefore making Perl a family of programming languages. It stands for
Practical Extraction and Reporting Language which processes data using pattern matching technique.

What type of thing is Perl?

Perl can be described as all of the following types of things:
Family of programming languages – a programming language is an artificial language
designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer.
Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a
machine and/or to express algorithms precisely. Both Perl and Raku are each
considered a:
General-purpose programming language – programming language designed to be
used for writing software in a wide variety of application domains.
High-level programming language – programming language with strong abstraction
from the details of the computer. While low-level programming languages are very
cryptic, a higher-level programming language may use natural language elements,
be easier to use, making the process of developing a program simpler and more
understandable with respect to a low-level language.
Interpreted language – programming language in which programs are 'indirectly'
executed ("interpreted") by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a
compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly'
executed by the host CPU.
Scripting language – programming language that supports the writing of
scripts, programs written for a software environment that automate the
execution of tasks which could alternatively be executed one by one by a
human operator.
Glue language – programming language (usually a scripting language)
used for writing programs or scripts that activate other scripts and
programs (thus "gluing" them together).
Dynamic programming language – high-level programming language that
executes many common behaviors while running that other languages might
perform during compilation, if at all. These behaviors could include extension
of the program, by adding new code, by extending objects and definitions, or
by modifying the type system, all during program execution.
Dynamically typed programming language – A programming language is
said to be dynamically typed when the majority of its type checking (for
example numerical vs. non-numerical) is performed at run-time as
opposed to at compile-time. Therefore, the type for a particular variable or
 value is not locked in. In dynamic typing values have types, but variables
do not; that is, a variable can refer to a value of any type.
Free and open-source software – software that is both free software and open source. It
is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, copy, study, change, and improve its
design through the availability of its source code.[2] Both Perl and Raku are free and
open-source.
Free software – software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction,
and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either
without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients have the
same rights under which it was obtained and that manufacturers of consumer
products incorporating free software provide the software as source code. In addition
to this, Perl is available for free (i.e., at no cost).
Open-source software – computer software that is available in source code form: the
source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are
provided under an open-source license that permits users to study, change, improve
and at times also to distribute the software. Open source software is very often
developed in a public, collaborative manner. Perl is developed and supported by a
large international community of volunteers.

Other names for Perl

Backronyms that describe Perl while treating it as an acronym:

PERL = Practical Extraction and Report Language[3]

PERL = Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister[4]
Other descriptions

Duct tape for the Internet[5]

Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages

Aspects of Perl

Strengths of Perl
Flexibility – perl is feature rich, and has borrowed from many other programming languages.
This is reflected in the motto "There's more than one way to do it". There are also many
extension modules available to expand the language.
Cross-platform implementation – perl programs work on many types of computers, usually
without the need to modify the source code. Perl interpreters have been developed for most
operating systems (platforms), taking into account the idiosyncrasies of each, so all such
platforms can theoretically run the same code.
Text manipulation – anything from spell checking, to search and replace operations using
regex, to natural language processing.
Pattern matching – regex is integrated into perl.
Stream editing –
Database manipulation –
Shell scripting – perl is good for writing programs in the form of a series of commands to be
run by the Unix shell, a command line interpreter. Such programs are called "scripts". In this
 regard, perl is considered to be a scripting language. Typical operations performed by shell
scripts include program execution, printing text, and file manipulation (copying, renaming,
deleting, etc.).
Being an interpreted language, perl has the following advantages:
Platform independence
Reflection and reflective use of the evaluator (e.g. a first-order eval function)
Smaller executable program size (since implementations have flexibility to choose the
instruction code)
Dynamic typing
Dynamic scoping

Weaknesses of Perl
Slow – being an interpreted language, perl code generally runs slower than compiled code.
It would not be well suited for writing state-of-the-art video games, for example.
Software maintenance – source code may be cryptic (much like C), making it difficult to
maintain code or fix bugs in code written by somebody else, unless adequate remarks are
included.

Components of Perl

Perl documentation
Perl Programming Documentation – name of the user manual for the Perl 5 programming
language, available online and for offline use.

Perl language structure

Perl language structure

Perl data types – classifications identifying various types of data, that determine the possible
values for each type; the operations that can be done on values of each type; the meaning of
the data; and the way values of each type can be stored.[6][7] The main data types in perl
are:
Scalars
Arrays
Hashes
Filehandles
Subroutines
Typeglobs
Perl control structures
Perl modules - modular extensions of the Perl language. The following modules (and
module groups) and many more, including support for them (manuals, etc.) can be found on
[Link], using its search box:
Webpage-related modules – for creating, serving, fetching, and parsing web pages
 [Link]
Library for WWW in Perl (LWP)
WebFetch
URI
HTML
Graphics-related modules – for manipulating graphics and images
GD
Graphics
Image
Image-Pngslimmer
CTPP
DBIx::Class
Gtk2-Perl
Mason
Moose
Perl Data Language (PDL)
Perl DBI
Perl Object Environment
Template Toolkit
Tk – for building Perl programs with a graphical user interface

Elements of a perl script

#!usr/bin/perl – called the "shebang line", after the hash symbol (#) and ! (bang) at the
beginning of the line. It is also known as the interpreter directive.
# – the number sign, also called the hash symbol. In Perl, the # indicates the start of a
comment. It instructs perl to ignore the rest of the line and not execute it as script code.
Main structure (derived from C)
Variables
Expressions
Assignment statements
Brace-delimited
Blocks
Control structures
Subroutines

Programming tools

Text editors that support Perl scripting

Notepad++ – supports syntax highlighting and code folding for over 50 programming,
scripting, and markup languages, including Perl.
gedit – free open source text editor for the GNOME desktop environment, Mac OS X and
Microsoft Windows. Designed as a general purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity
 and ease of use. It includes tools for editing source code and structured text such as markup
languages. It has configurable syntax highlighting for various languages including Perl.
UltraEdit – commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (Intel) created
in 1994 by Ian D. Mead. The editor contains tools for programmers, including macros,
configurable syntax highlighting, code folding, file type conversions, project management,
Perl Compatible Regular Expressions for search-and-replace, a column-edit mode, remote
editing of files via FTP, interfaces for APIs or command lines of choice and more.
Vim – free and open-source text editor based on vi, designed for use both from a command
line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Includes a
scripting interface for Perl.
Visual Studio Code – is a free source-code editor from Microsoft, and available for Windows,
Linux and macOS. Includes syntax highlighting for Perl and the ability to run and debug Perl
code directly within the editor.

Perl support
CPAN – the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, a repository of over 250,000 software
modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl
programming language by over 12,000 contributors.

Websites
PerlMonks

Publications about Perl

Books about Perl

Programming Perl (aka the Camel Book)

Learning Perl (aka the Llama Book[8])
Intermediate Perl
Mastering Perl by brian d foy
Advanced Perl Programming
Effective Perl Programming
Higher-Order Perl
Perl Best Practices
Perl Cookbook
Perl Design Patterns Book
Object Oriented Perl
 Perl Hacks

Magazines about Perl

The Perl Review

History of Perl
History of Perl

Versions of Perl
Perl
Raku

Perl was derived from

AWK – interpreted programming language designed for text processing and typically used
as a data extraction and reporting tool. It is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating
systems. AWK is named using the initials from the last name of each of its 3 authors.
C – very popular programming language. Many later languages have borrowed directly or
indirectly from C, including C++, D, Go, Rust, Java, JavaScript, Limbo, LPC, C#, Objective-
C, Perl, PHP, Python, Verilog (hardware description language), and Unix's C shell. These
languages have drawn many of their control structures and other basic features from C. Most
of them (with Python being the most dramatic exception) are also very syntactically similar to
C in general, and they tend to combine the recognizable expression and statement syntax of
C with underlying type systems, data models, and semantics that can be radically different.
grep – grep stands for "Global Regular Expression Print". It is command-line utility for
searching plain-text data sets for lines matching a regular expression. Grep was originally
developed for the Unix operating system, but is available today for all Unix-like systems.
sed – (stream editor), is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple,
compact programming language. sed was one of the earliest tools to support regular
expressions, and remains in use for text processing, most notably with the substitution
command. Other options for doing "stream editing" include AWK and Perl.
sh – the Bourne shell, a command-line shell for Unix.

Perl software

Commercial software programmed in Perl

Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy
AxKit
BackupPC
Big Medium
BioMOBY
BioPerl
Bonsai
Bricolage
Catalyst
CGIProxy
cPanel
Cowsay
Dada Mail
Dancer
Debian bug tracking system
Fink
Frozen Bubble
GCfilms
GCstar
Greymatter
IComic
Ikonboard
Infobot
LedgerSMB
LiveJournal
Logitech Media Server
Majordomo
MARC
Mason
Matt's Script Archive
Maypole framework
Mojolicious
Movable Type
NTP pool
OTRS
Padre
Perl Archive Toolkit
Perl Object Environment
Perlbal
Plack
POPFile
ProBoards
Qpsmtpd
Request Tracker
SpamAssassin
Sprog
SQL-Ledger
Strawberry Perl
SVK
TWiki
V6
VERTCON
 WebGUI
Webmin
Website Meta Language
WikiWikiWeb
Xuheki

Free software programmed in Perl

Agora – was a World Wide Web email browser and was a proof of concept to help people to
use the full internet. Agora was an email-based web browser designed for non-graphic
terminals and to help people without full access to the internet such as in developing
countries or without a permanent internet connection. Similar to W3Gate, Agora was a server
application designed to fetch HTML documents through e-mail rather than http.
Automake – programming tool that produces portable makefiles for use by the make
program, used in compiling software. It is made by the Free Software Foundation as one of
GNU programs, and is part of the GNU build system. The makefiles produced follow the
GNU Coding Standards.
AWStats – open source Web analytics reporting tool, suitable for analyzing data from
Internet services such as web, streaming media, mail and FTP servers.
AxKit – was an XML Apache publishing framework run by the Apache foundation written in
Perl. It provided on-the-fly conversion from XML to any format, such as HTML, WAP or text
using either W3C standard techniques, or flexible custom code.
BackupPC – free Disk-to-disk backup software suite with a web-based frontend. The cross-
platform server will run on any Linux, Solaris, or UNIX based server. No client is necessary.
Blosxom – free-software weblog program (and simple content management system) written
in Perl by Rael Dornfest. It uses the pre-existing file system instead of a database
management system, unlike most blog software.
Bricolage – Enterprise Class content management system (CMS) competitive in features
and capability to high end, high cost proprietary products.
Bugzilla – Web-based general-purpose bugtracker and testing tool originally developed and
used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License.
Catalyst – open source web application framework. A web application developer would use
Catalyst to deal with code common to all web applications: it provides interfaces to web
servers and receiving page requests, dispatching these into developer-written code to
process and return the requests, and provides a standardised interface for data models,
authentication, session management and other common web application elements.
CGI:IRC – CGI program written in Perl that allows access to IRC via a web browser. It is
designed to be flexible and has many uses such as an IRC gateway for an IRC network, a
chat-room for a website or to access IRC when stuck behind a restrictive firewall.
ChipVault – terminal based Vi wrapper for creating and managing Verilog and VHDL RTL (
register transfer level ) based ASIC and FPGA digital chip designs. It was created by an
ASIC designer in 2001 to improve his daily workflow.
Dada Mail – web-based electronic mailing list management system that can be used for
announcement lists. It can also be used to create and manage discussion lists, if you
activate and configure an included plug-in called Dada Bridge, for which you will need to set
a cron task.
Dancer – open source micro web application framework written in Perl inspired by Ruby's
Sinatra.
Debian bug tracking system – the bug tracking system used by the Debian project. Its
unique feature is that it doesn't have any form of web-interface to edit bug reports - all
modification is done through email.
DJabberd – open source XMPP application server.
Drakconf – allows easy configuration of Mandriva Linux, a Linux distribution.
EPrints – open source software package for building open access repositories that are
compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. It shares many
of the features commonly seen in Document Management systems, but is primarily used for
institutional repositories and scientific journals.
Fink – project to port and package open-source Unix programs to Mac OS X.
Ganglia – scalable distributed system monitor tool for high-performance computing systems
such as clusters and grids. It allows the user to remotely view live or historical statistics
(such as CPU load averages or network utilization) for all machines that are being
monitored.
Git – distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system with an
emphasis on speed.
GNU parallel – command-line driven utility for Linux or other Unix-like operating systems
which allows the user to execute shell scripts in parallel. It is free software, available under
the terms of GPLv3.
GPRename – program for renaming multiple files and directories at one time. It runs on any
Unix-like operating system.
Ikiwiki – wiki application that stores its pages in a standard version control system such as
Git or Subversion or 6+ others.
Infobot – IRC bot that remembers URLs and associate them with a descriptive name.
LiveJournal – free and open-source server software that also runs the LiveJournal virtual
community.
LiVES – video editing software and VJ tool, released under the GNU General Public
License version 3 or later with versions available for Linux distributions, BSD, Solaris, and
IRIX.
Logitech Media Server – streaming audio server that supports Logitech's Squeezebox range
of digital audio receivers.
Maypole framework – web application framework for Model-view-controller-oriented
applications. It is designed to minimize coding requirements for creating simple web
interfaces to databases, while remaining flexible enough to support enterprise web
applications.
Mojolicious – real-time web application framework designed for use in both simple and
complex web applications.
Movable Type – weblog publishing system that can host multiple weblogs and standalone
content pages, manage files and user roles, templates, tags, categories, and trackback links.
Netpbm – open source package of graphics programs and programming library. Works
under many Unix platforms, Windows, Mac OS X, VMS, and Amiga OS.
OCS Inventory – inventory a network's IT assets by collecting information about the
hardware and software of networked machines running the OCS client program ("OCS
Inventory Agent"). OCS can be used to visualize the inventory through a web interface.
Openkore – custom client and an advanced automated assistant for the MMORPG
Ragnarok Online. Licensed under the GNU General Public License.
OTRS – Open-source Ticket Request System. Free and open-source trouble ticket system
software package that a company, organization, or other entity can use to assign tickets to
incoming queries and track further communications about them.
Padre – Perl Application Development and Refactoring Environment, a multi-language
software development platform comprising an IDE and a plug-in system to extend it. For
developing applications in Perl.
Perlbal – reverse proxy load balancer and web server. Distributed under both the GNU
General Public License and the Artistic License.
Pisg – Perl IRC Statistics Generator, an open-source Internet Relay Chat (IRC) log file
analysis and statistical visualization program that analyzes various formats of log files from
IRC clients and bots and generates HTML pages containing statistics about the channel the
logs were taken from.
Qpsmtpd – SMTP daemon written in Perl. It was originally designed to be a drop-in
replacement for qmail-smtpd, the SMTP component of qmail, and it is now also compatible
with Postfix, Exim, sendmail and virtually any software that "speaks SMTP".
Request Tracker – ticket-tracking system written in Perl used to coordinate tasks and
manage requests among a community of users.
Satellite – Redhat Satellite is an open source system management system that allows a
system's administrators to deploy, manage and monitor Redhat Linux and Solaris hosts.
Basically a local version of Red Hat Network.
Scoop – content management system (CMS) for collaborative publishing geared toward
encouraging user contributions and participation. The latest version released was 1.1.8 in
2007. It is no longer developed.
Spacewalk – open source systems management software developed by Red Hat. It is the
upstream version of the RHN Satellite Server, which was open sourced in 2008. Spacewalk
includes the web interface and back-end, as well as RHN Proxy Server and associated
client software of Satellite and makes them available to users and developers under a free
and open-source software (FOSS) license.
SpamAssassin – e-mail spam filter that uses content-matching rules, released under the
Apache License 2.0. It is now part of the Apache Foundation.
SQL-Ledger – enterprise resource planning (ERP) and double entry accounting system.
Accounting data is stored in an SQL Database Server and a standard web browser can be
used as its user interface.
SVK – decentralized version control system, with a hierarchical distributed design
comparable to centralized deployment of BitKeeper and GNU arch.
Template Toolkit – template engine used primarily for building web sites, but is also suitable
for creating any type of digital document, such as a PDF or LaTeX file. Template Toolkit is
based on a mini-language and does not allow direct Perl in its templates.
TWiki – structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge
or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal. Users can create wiki
applications using the TWiki Markup Language, and developers can extend its functionality
with plugins.
UDPCast – file transfer tool that can send data simultaneously to many destinations on a
LAN. This can for instance be used to install entire classrooms of PCs at once.
UseModWiki – wiki engine licensed under the GNU General Public License. Its page are
stored in ordinary files, not in a relational database. Its interface is similar to MediaWiki with
the classic skin.
W3Perl – logfile analyser, which can parse Web/FTP/Mail/CUPS or Squid files. Most major
web logfile formats are supported, as well as split/compressed files.
WebGUI – permits non-technically minded users to arrange content in pages and layouts,
containing 'Assets' (applets) which permit website visitors to view and interact with various
types of data from basic Articles to full-blown Content management system and custom
applications. Released under the GNU General Public License.
Website Meta Language – extensible web designer's off-line HTML generation toolkit for
Unix, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL v2). It is written in ANSI C and
Perl 5, built via a GNU Autoconf based source tree and runs out-of-the-box on all major Unix
derivates.
 XCAT – Extreme Cloud Administration Toolkit, an open-source distributed computing
management software developed by IBM, used for the deployment and administration of
Linux or AIX based clusters.
Xuheki – web-based Internet Message Access Protocol built upon Ajax technology and
supports the Apache webserver.

Perl culture
Perl golf
Just another Perl hacker
Obfuscated Perl Contest
There's more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI)

Perl organizations
Perl Foundation
Perl Mongers
Perl Monks
Yet Another Perl Conference

Perl personalities
Larry Wall
Sean M. Burke
Chromatic
Allison Randal
Lincoln Stein
Dan Sugalski

Perl writers
Tom Christiansen
chromatic
Damian Conway
brian d foy
Neil J. Gunther
Allison Randal
Randal L. Schwartz
Audrey Tang
Larry Wall

Raku
Raku
 Raku rules – a core part of the language that expands the definition of "regexes" with
parsing and pattern matching constructs that exceed the capabilities of formal regular
expressions

Implementations of Raku
Rakudo

See also
Perl Data Language
Perl Object Environment
Perl Object-Oriented Persistence
Plain Old Documentation

References
1. Sheppard, Doug (2000-10-16). "Beginner's Introduction to Perl" ([Link]
00/10/[Link]). [Link]. Retrieved 2011-01-08.
2. Free Software Foundation. "What is free software?" ([Link]
html). Retrieved 14 December 2011.
3. Richardson, Marjorie (1999-05-01). "Larry Wall, the Guru of Perl" ([Link]
m/article/3394). Linux Journal. Retrieved 2011-01-03.
4. Wall, Larry. "perl - The Perl language interpreter" ([Link]
Perl 5 version 12.2 documentation. Retrieved 2011-01-26.
5. [1] ([Link] Tim O'Reilly quoting
Hassan Schroeder, Sun's first webmaster]
6. type ([Link] at the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
7. Shaffer, C.A. Data Structures and Algorithms, 1.2
8. Castro, Elizabeth (2001). Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web ([Link]
oks?id=PodQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Learning+Perl%22+schwartz). Peachpit Press. p. 314.
ISBN 978-0-201-73568-0. Retrieved June 23, 2011.

External links
Official website ([Link] [Link]

Community support

PerlMonks ([Link] – a community committed to sharing Perl knowledge

and coding tips

Free Perl tutorials

Perl in 10 easy lessons ([Link]

sson-1_120.html) at Linux Forums
Perl Maven Tutorial ([Link] – a beginner and an advanced
tutorial
 Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes ([Link] – introductory
tutorial
Introductory Perl Tutorial Course for Windows ([Link]
– includes CGI instruction.
Essential Perl ([Link] – from the Computer
Science Library, Stanford University

Free on-line books about Perl

Practical Perl Programming ([Link] – book by

A.D. Marshall, Cardiff University
Modern Perl ([Link] – free
on-line book by chromatic
Picking up Perl ([Link] – free on-line book
by Bradley M. Kuhn and Neil Smyth
Impatient Perl ([Link] – for readers with previous programming
experience. Learn Perl in about a week.
Learning Perl the Hard Way ([Link] – for people who know another
programming language.
Higher-Order Perl ([Link] – advanced programming in Perl
Perl phrasebook ([Link]
80&value=linkto%3A%22PerlPhrasebook%22) – compare equivalent examples of Perl and
Python code, on the Python Wiki

Perl scripts

Perl Script Repository at [Link] ([Link]

Retrieved from "[Link]