catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  Perl
       
           A high-level programming language, started
          by Larry Wall in 1987 and developed as an open source
          project.  It has an eclectic heritage, deriving from the
          ubiquitous C programming language and to a lesser extent
          from sed, awk, various Unix shell languages, Lisp,
          and at least a dozen other tools and languages.  Originally
          developed for Unix, it is now available for many
          platforms.
       
          Perl's elaborate support for regular expression matching and
          substitution has made it the language of choice for tasks
          involving string manipulation, whether for text or binary
          data.  It is particularly popular for writing CGI scripts.
       
          The language's highly flexible syntax and concise regular
          expression operators, make densely written Perl code
          indecipherable to the uninitiated.  The syntax is, however,
          really quite simple and powerful and, once the basics have
          been mastered, a joy to write.
       
          Perl's only primitive data type is the "scalar", which can
          hold a number, a string, the undefined value, or a typed
          reference.  Perl's aggregate data types are arrays, which
          are ordered lists of scalars indexed by natural numbers,
          and hashes (or "{associative arrays") which are unordered
          lists of scalars indexed by strings.  A reference can point to
          a scalar, array, hash, function, or filehandle.  Objects
          are implemented as references "{blessed" with a class name.
          Strings in Perl are eight-bit clean, including nulls, and
          so can contain binary data.
       
          Unlike C but like most Lisp dialects, Perl internally and
          dynamically handles all memory allocation, garbage
          collection, and type coercion.
       
          Perl supports closures, recursive functions, symbols
          with either lexical scope or dynamic scope, nested data
          structures of arbitrary content and complexity (as lists or
          hashes of references), and packages (which can serve as
          classes, optionally inheriting methods from one or more
          other classes).  There is ongoing work on threads,
          Unicode, exceptions, and backtracking.  Perl program
          files can contain embedded documentation in POD (Plain Old
          Documentation), a simple markup language.
       
          The normal Perl distribution contains documentation for the
          language, as well as over a hundred modules (program
          libraries).  Hundreds more are available from The
          Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.  Modules are themselves
          generally written in Perl, but can be implemented as
          interfaces to code in other languages, typically compiled C.
       
          The free availability of modules for almost any conceivable
          task, as well as the fact that Perl offers direct access to
          almost all system calls and places no arbitrary limits on
          data structure size or complexity, has led some to describe
          Perl, in a parody of a famous remark about lex, as the
          "Swiss Army chainsaw" of programming.
       
          The use of Perl has grown significantly since its adoption as
          the language of choice of many World-Wide Web developers.
          CGI interfaces and libraries for Perl exist for several
          platforms and Perl's speed and flexibility make it well
          suited for form processing and on-the-fly web page creation.
       
          Perl programs are generally stored as text source files,
          which are compiled into virtual machine code at run time;
          this, in combination with its rich variety of data types and
          its common use as a glue language, makes Perl somewhat hard to
          classify as either a "{scripting language" or an
          "{applications language" -- see Ousterhout's dichotomy.
          Perl programs are usually called "Perl scripts", if only for
          historical reasons.
       
          Version 5 was a major rewrite and enhancement of version 4,
          released sometime before November 1993.  It added real data
          structures by way of "references", un-adorned subroutine
          calls, and method inheritance.
       
          The spelling "Perl" is preferred over the older "PERL" (even
          though some explain the language's name as originating in the
          acronym for "Practical Extraction and Report Language").  The
          program that interprets/compiles Perl code is called
          "perl", typically "/usr/local/bin/perl" or "/usr/bin/perl".
       
          Current version: 5.005_03 stable, 5.005_62 in development, as
          of 1999-12-04.
       
          http://www.perl.com/)" rel="nofollow">Home (http://www.perl.com/).
       
          Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.lang.perl.announce,
          news:comp.lang.perl.misc.
       
          ["Programming Perl", Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz,
          O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.  Sebastopol, CA.  ISBN
          0-93715-64-1].
       
          ["Learning Perl" by Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly & Associates,
          Inc., Sebastopol, CA].
       
          [{Jargon File]
       
          (1999-12-04)
       
       

  Perl /perl/ n. [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a.
     Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language
     developed by Larry Wall (<>, author of `patch(1)' and
     `rn(1)') and distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles awk, but
     is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of `sed(1)' and
     shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins,
     who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of
     the languages of choice, and it is by far the most widely used tool
     for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been described, in a
     parody of a famous remark about `lex(1)', as the Swiss-Army chainsaw
     of Unix programming. Though Perl is very useful, it would be a stretch
     to describe it as pretty or elegant; people who like clean, spare
     design generally prefer Python. See also Camel Book, TMTOWTDI.
  
  

  PERL
       Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (slang)
       
       

  PERL
       Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL)
       
       

  Perl
     Αγγλικά n.
     (ετ γλπρο en) γλώσσα προγραμματισμού γλώσσα υψηλού επιπέδου, κυρίως
  κατάλληλη για επεξεργασία αρχείο κειμένου και με πλούσια βιβλιοθήκη
  κανονική έκφραση

  perl
     Middle English n.
     (alt form enm perle)
     Welsh n.
     pearl

  Perl
     Hunsrik n.
     pearl
     n.
     (lb en computer language) A family of high-level language programming
  languages, particularly used for text processing.

  Perl
     n.
     (lb en computer language) A family of high-level language programming
  languages, particularly used for text processing.

  perl
     Middle English n.
     (alt form enm perle)
     Welsh n.
     pearl

  Perl
     n.
     (lb en computer language) A family of high-level language programming
  languages, particularly used for text processing.

  perl
     Middle English n.
     (alt form enm perle)
     Welsh n.
     pearl

  Perl
     n.
     (lb en computer language) A family of high-level language programming
  languages, particularly used for text processing.

  perl
     Korniska n.
     pärla

  Perl‐ /pˈɛɾl/
  parelachtig, parelend

  Perl /pˈɜːl/
  بيرل

  Perl /pɛʁl/ 
  Perl

  
/ˈpɝɫ/