Perl: /perl/ n. [Practical Extraction and Report Language,
a.k.a. Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted
language developed by Larry Wall (<<larry@wall.org>>, author of
`patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over Usenet. Superficially
resembles awk, but is much hairier, including many facilities
reminiscent of `sed(1)' and shells and a comprehensive Unix
system-call interface. Unix sysadmins, who are almost always
incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of the languages of
choice, and it is by far the most widely used tool for making
`live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been described, in a parody of a
famous remark about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of Unix
programming. Though Perl is very useful, it would be a stretch to
describe it as pretty or elegant; people who like clean, spare
design generally prefer Python. See also Camel Book, TMTOWTDI.
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