What is perl?

The term “Perl” refers to a family of high-level programming languages that are commonly used in both interpreted and general-purpose applications. From 2000 to 2019, it also referred to its sister language, which was renamed Raku in October 2019.

Although “Perl” isn’t an official acronym, there are many backronyms that can be used to refer to it. For instance, “Perl 5,” which Larry Wall developed in 1987, became known as a general-purpose language for processing reports. It underwent numerous changes and revisions before it was eventually renamed Raku in 2000. Both languages have their own distinct development teams and are constantly influenced by each other.

The various features of the “Perl” languages are borrowed from other programming languages, such as sed, sh, and c. These allow them to provide text processing facilities that are not dependent on the limitations of older command line tools. In the 1990s, it became a popular CGI scripting language. Its string parsing and regular expression capabilities were also widely used.

What is perl used for?

In addition to being used in conjunction with CGI, the “Perl 5” family of languages is also widely used for various other applications, such as network programming and finance. It has been called the “Sword of the Scripting Industry” due to its powerful and flexible capabilities. In 1998, it was also regarded as a “duct tape” that holds the Internet together. This term refers to both its perceived inelegance and its ubiquitous use.

How to write a perl script

Perl is procedural in nature and has variables, expressions, assignment statements, brace-delimited blocks, control structures, and subroutines. Perl’s basic structure is mostly derived from C.

Shell programming has features that Perl also uses. All variables are identified by leading sigils, which enable direct interpolation of variables into strings. Although Perl employs sigils on all visits to variables, unlike the shell, the sigil in Perl denotes the type of the expression rather than the type of the variable, unlike most other programming languages that use sigils. As an illustration, an array is represented by the sigil “@” (for instance, @arrayname), whereas a specific item of an array is represented by the scalar sigil “$” (for instance, $arrayname). Although many of these tools are implemented by programs outside of the shell, Perl also contains several built-in functions that provide tools frequently used in shell programming, such as sorting and calling operating system services.

If you want to learn perl there are several resources that is a good start:

https://learn.perl.org/first_steps/

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-install-and-run-perl-2641103

How to run a Perl script on windows

Check to determine if you already have Perl before downloading it. Perl may have already been installed when you installed an application because it is used by so many programs in one way or another. Perl comes pre-installed on Macs. It’s presumably installed on Linux. Perl is not automatically installed by Windows.

It’s not difficult to check. Simply type cmd into the run dialog box on Windows and hit Enter to open a command prompt. Open a terminal window on a Mac or Linux computer.

When prompted, enter:

perl -v

Download and install Perl on windows

Download the installer and install Perl yourself if it isn’t already installed.

Close the terminal or command prompt window. Go to the Perl download page and select the appropriate operating system’s Download ActivePerl link.

You might have the option of ActivePerl or Strawberry Perl if you’re using Windows. Select ActivePerl if you’re just starting out. If you are familiar with Perl, you might use Strawberry Perl. Since the versions are comparable, you have complete discretion.

To download the installer, click the links, and then launch it. Accept all of the default settings, and Perl will be installed shortly. Open a command window or terminal session and repeat the steps to make sure.

perl -v

There should be a message that says you have installed perl correctly.

How to run a Perl script on Mac os

Considering that Perl (version 5.6 as of this writing) is pre-installed with Mac OS X, there isn’t much to install or set up. Any text editor can be used to write a Perl script. The greatest programmer’s text editor for Mac OS X is BBEdit from Bare Bones Software, which automatically colors the syntax of your Perl script. Since Perl is a command-line language, you often run Perl scripts using the Terminal program that is included with Mac OS X. But don’t let this frighten you—you’ll quickly discover that the Terminal isn’t actually that terrifying.