W
hen I began this article, I was tempted to describe Perl’s development history. This might illuminate some of its design philosophy; though, it occurs to me that its history is outside the scope of this article. Even more to the point, this history has already been recorded in great detail and so, in true Perl fashion, I’m inclined to ask, “Why reinvent the wheel?”
My next thought was to describe what Perl is; however, I’m not certain I can outwit Doug Sheppard's description: “Perl is the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages.” Which leaves me with a far less colorful description: Perl is a high-level, general- purpose, interpreted programming language.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do we love Perl?
Flexibility
One of Perl’s major design philosophies is that it refuses to favor one programming style or paradigm over another. Perl is capable of a variety of object oriented (OO) implementations, C-style structural programming, functional programming, and more. For example, Perl is even capable of functional programming with tail recursion and lambda expressions. This flexibility is attractive and allows everyone to utilize the language in their preferred style.
In addition to providing various paradigms, Perl offers an external subroutine (XS) interface. This interface allows developers to call C or C++ subroutines from Perl, creating virtually unlimited possibilities. This is the reason CPAN provides wrappers for just about every C library you could possibly want; but more on CPAN later.
This syntactical flexibility allows new developers to pick up the basics in a few hours and explore a variety possibilities and styles.
Maturity in a Living Language
The development of the Perl language began in 1987. This twenty plus years of development experience has led to a stable, reliable, and mature language.
When new versions of the language are released, basic calls remain unchanged. This ensures that the vast majority of the code written today will work in future versions of Perl. This consistency makes Perl a great language for enterprise operations that require stability.
The fact that Perl is still actively being developed is also an important factor. It means that new functionality and improvements are being made to the language as a whole. This active development ensures that bugs are patched and security fixes are released with each new version. Active development adds yet another layer of reliability and security.
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