Characteristics and use.
WHAT IT IS
A dynamically typed scripting language, designed for text processing and system administration.
WHAT DISTINGUISHES IT
Extremely powerful regular expression support, built into the language Many ways to express the same thing Concise, sometimes to the point of illegibility
WHAT IT WAS USED FOR HISTORICALLY
System administration Text processing Early web scripting Bioinformatics
WHY IT MATTERED
It was the dominant scripting language before Python's rise.
WHERE IT STILL APPEARS
Existing systems, particularly in administration and text processing Bioinformatics pipelines Scripts embedded in older infrastructure
WHAT ITS REPUTATION IS
Write-only code, arising from its conciseness and flexibility.
WHAT THAT MEANS PRACTICALLY
Perl written without discipline is difficult to maintain.
WHAT DISCIPLINED PERL REQUIRES
Strict and warning modes enabled always Meaningful names Restraint with concise constructs
WHEN YOU WILL ENCOUNTER IT
Maintaining existing systems.
WHAT TO DO THEN
Learn enough to read it, and enable the strictness modes before changing anything.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Rewrite working systems without reason.
