Perl is a stable and cross platform programming language
It is used for the purpose of mission critical projects in the private and
public sectors
Perl is a Open Source software, licensed
under its Artistic License , or
the GNU General Public License (GPL) .
Perl was created by Mr Larry Wall.
Perl 1.0 was released in 1987 to usenet's alt.comp.sources
PC Magazine named Perl a finalist for Technical Excellence Award in the Development
Tool category in 1998.
Perl is also listed in the Oxford English Dictionary .
Features of Perl
Perl takes all the best features from languages, like C, awk, sed,
sh, and BASIC, including others.
The database integration interface (DBI ) of perl supports
third-party databases like Oracle, Sybase, Postgres ,
MySQL and many others.
Perl works well with HTML, XML, and other mark-up languages.
Perl also supports Unicode .
Perl is a Y2K compliant .
Through XS or SWIG Perl interfaces with external C/C++ libraries
..
Perl is extensible. There are more than 500 third party modules which are available
from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN ).
The Perl interpreter can also be embedded into other systems
Scalar Variables
The most basic type of variable in Perl is the scalar variable. Scalar variables hold
strings and numbers both, and are remarkable as the strings and numbers are completely
interchangable.
Array Variables
More interesting kind of variables in perl is the array variable which are nothing but
a list of scalars entities (i'e numbers and strings). Array variables do have the same
format as that of a scalar variables except that they are prefixed by a symbol @.
File Handling Functions
In PERL files are given a name, also called handle. All the input and output of the file
is achieved by filehandling functions. Filehandles are also a means to communicate from
one program to another program.
Control Structures
Perl is an iterative programing language in which the control flows from first statement
of the program to the last statement until and unless something interrupts. The things
that can interrupt the linear flow are called conditional branches and loop structures.
String Matching
The most useful features of Perl among many is its powerful string manipulation functions.
At the heart of this comes the regular expression (RE) which is shared among many other
utilities in UNIX.
