Powerful, stable, mature, portablePerl 5 is a highly capable, feature-rich programming language with over 27 years of development. Perl 5 runs on over 100 platforms from portables to mainframes and is suitable for both rapid prototyping and large scale development projects. "Perl" is a family of languages, "Perl 6" is part of the family, but it is a separate language which has its own development team. Its existence has no significant impact on the continuing development of "Perl 5". |
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White papers: Technical Showcases |
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White papers of Perl 5 technology at your disposal.
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Perl 5 FeaturesMission criticalUsed for mission critical projects in the public and private sectors. Object-oriented, procedural and functionalSupports object-oriented, procedural and functional programming. Easily extendibleThere are over 25,000 open source modules available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Text manipulationPerl includes powerful tools for processing text that make it ideal for working with HTML, XML, and all other mark-up and natural languages. Unicode supportSupports Unicode version 6 (from Perl 5.14). Database integrationPerl's database integration interface (DBI) supports third-party databases including Oracle, Sybase, Postgres, MySQL and many others. C/C++ library interfacePerl interfaces with external C/C++ libraries through XS or SWIG. EmbeddableThe Perl interpreter can be embedded into other systems such as web servers and database servers. Open SourcePerl is Open Source software, licensed under its Artistic License, or the GNU General Public License (GPL). |
Perl 5 and the WebIdeal web programming languagePerl is an ideal web programming language due to its text manipulation capabilities and rapid development cycle. Web FrameworksThere are many web frameworks written in Perl, a leading one is Catalyst. Database integrationPerl's DBI package makes web-database integration easy. DBIx::Class - is available as an Object Relational Mapper. Web modulesCPAN offers thousands of modules, so almost any task you need to accomplish will be made easier, from URL or image manipulation, to Amazon EC2 APIs and much more. Duct-tape of the internet, and more...Perl has long been known as "the duct-tape of the Internet", however many large web based applications are also written solely in Perl. Encryption capablePerl can handle encrypted Web data, including e-commerce transactions. Embed into ApachePerl can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as much as 2000%, mod_perl allows the Apache web server to embed a Perl interpreter. |
Larry Wall on Perl...
- Perl, the first postmodern computer language
- Diligence, Patience, and Humility" in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
- Amazon.com interview with Larry Wall
- Linux Journal interview (May 1999)
- The Joy Of Perl
More about Perl
Tip
Database interfaces DBIx::Class provides an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) to databases (e.g. Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Postgress, Access etc)