Perl is a programming language, created by a man named Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Since
its begining, Perl has gone through many changes and major releases (latest version is 5.8.8 as of this
writing). The next big thing will be Perl 6.
So much for the introduction. What can you do with Perl? Anything you can do with any other programming
language. Whole systems or applications can be written in Perl, but more
typically it is used for system administration tasks and for web programming.
Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages, one of which is the popular C language.
Many high-traffic websites, such as Amazon.com and Ticketmaster.com use Perl extensively.
A Perl example:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello, World!\n";
This is an example of an extremely simple Perl script. The first line ("#!/usr/bin/perl") is required on a Unix or Unix-type operating system. It lets the operating system
know where to find the Perl interpreter.
The second line ("print "Hello, World!\n"; tells the Perl interpreter
to display the words "Hello, World!" on the display.
