Perl

The programmer and author of Perl, which is so important today, is Larry Wall. He was looking for a solution that would make voice commands easier for programming commands. This manifests itself in easy search and replace operations, as executed on the editor. Perl is a synthesis of the C programming language and the UNIX properties sed and awk. Thus the world of the programming language was made easier.

What is Perl?

All programs written with the Perl program are stored as ASCII files. This is similar to a shell script. These files are then compiled before the first execution. The programs are thus easily editable and at the same time transferred to other computers. Perl offers a high speed for search functions. According to the Artistic License under the GPL (GNU Public License) Perl is freely available for everyone with source codes included. On some computers with UIX- or Linux system the program is already pre-installed. Perl can be found under the path /usr/local/bin/perl or under the other path /usr/bin/perl. Certain ports are also included for the operating systems IOS for Macbooks or also for Windows. However, the full functionality is only available for non-UNIX systems. As of 2012, the stable version Perl 5.12.2 has been released. To find out the number of the installed Perl version on the computer, you can find it under "perl-v". Some things can already be considered obsolete, since the tutorial was written from the base Perl 5.005, or Perl 5.6.0. But all Perl versions are also running on newer versions of Perl interpreters because of their compatibility.

Perl- The new program- How does it work?

The program is written in a text editor and saved as a text file. Perl does not work in a text editor because the Text file is saved in ASCII code. With the operating systems UNIX and Linux you should still pay attention to the fact that the Execute bit must be set in the file. This way you can call the Perl programs directly. This works with chmod u+x skript.pl. In the command line then perl skript.pl is called. Another possibility is also to enter skript.pl in the command line. So if there are problems with the first path, e.g. executable programs are not searched, the second path is always successful. The first line that is displayed to you always starts with a hash, i.e. #. This hash must be considered as a comment by Perl, otherwise it has no function. This first line applies to this the Shell to show that it is the perl program and not the shell script. The path shows where perl was installed in the system. It is always recommended to specify a -w in the path, because this allows extensive messages. The last line shows the print function. This function shows a string, this string will be printed on the screen. Commands must always be terminated with a semicolon ";". Function names must be case sensitive, otherwise an error code will occur. You can also use any number of tabs and line feeds at any position where a space can be placed. Comments must be marked with #. These are valid until the end of the line.

Name and different versions

The name of the program comes from the bible. Jesus wants to describe the kingdom of heaven with the image of a merchant. He wants to sell his property to buy a pearl. Before the first release the name Peal, was changed to Perl, because there was already a program called PEARL. Perl describes the language and perl the language. The Perl community takes great care that the spelling PERL is not used. Meanwhile there are different versions of the program. Perl 1 came out on December 18, 1987 and was a more powerful shell. Version 2.0 was released on June 5, 1987 and was completely redesigned. The Regex engine was extended and improved. The Perl 3 version followed on 18 October 1989. This could then be used with binary Data and write network programming. On 21.03.1991 then followed Perl 4. This was worked on and developed by different programmers until 4.036 was reached. Larry Wall then programmed Perl 5 in 1993. This version was released on 10/18/1994. Formatted documentation could now be inserted as source code. Perl 5 was then also ported to Windows and Macintosh. Perl 5.6 was able to handle Unicodes and UTF-8 on 03/22/2000. After version 5.22, the current version is now Perl 6.