PERL

PERL is a popular language on UNIX systems. You can use PERL on World; we have both perl 4 and perl 5 installed. Both are in /usr/bin. It has control structures that will be familiar to programmers familiar with BASIC, C, or Pascal, but has a number of odd-seeming features that are geared toward making it convenient to use for common system-administration problems. The name is explained two ways by the author, Larry Wall: "Practical Extraction and Report Language" emphasizes the concessions it makes to pragmatic concerns (at the expense of elegance); while "Pathologically ecclectic rubbish lister" suggests how unusual some of it's features will seem when you begin using the language.

Manual pages are available, with:

	world%  man perl
or
	world%  man perl5

Supporting files are in /usr/local/lib/perl and /usr/local/lib/perl5. perl5 also comes with it's own hypertext reference material

Finally, there are several USENET groups pertinent to PERL programmers:

comp.lang.perl.misc is for general perl issues
comp.lang.perl.announce is for announcment of new packages
comp.lang.perl.modules is for discussion of semi-standard collections of perl routines

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