If you’re doing anything with the World Wide Web in 1998, you’re almost certainly using Perl. Whether it’s processing a guestbook form, rotating banner ads, or parsing server logs, Perl is the "duct tape" that holds the internet together. With the release of Perl 5.005, the language is maturing into a serious tool for enterprise automation.
Larry Wall originally designed Perl for text processing (Practical Extraction and Report Language), but its regular expression engine is what made it a legend. There is simply no other language that handles strings as efficiently. In a world where the web is 99% text, that’s a superpower.
Perl 5.005 brings significant improvements to threading and performance. But the real strength of Perl isn't in the core language-it's in CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). If you have a problem, someone on CPAN has already solved it and uploaded a module for it. LWP for web requests, DBI for database access, CGI.pm for... well, CGI. It’s the first true "open source" ecosystem that actually works.
The syntax, of course, is "polarizing." People call it "write-only code." Between the sigils ($, @, %), the default variable $_, and the ability to write a one-liner that looks like line noise but performs a complex data transformation, Perl has a steep learning curve. But for those of us who have mastered it, the productivity is unmatched. TMTOWTDI ("There's More Than One Way To Do It") is our motto.
As we look toward the turn of the millennium, Python and this new "PHP" thing are gaining ground, but Perl remains the king of the server room. It’s fast, it’s everywhere, and it gets the job done. Just make sure you comment your regexes, or you won't know what they do three months from now.
# A classic Perl CGI snippet
use CGI;
my $q = CGI->new;
print $q->header('text/html');
print $q->h1("Hello from Perl 5.005!");
foreach my $param ($q->param) {
print $q->p("$param: " . $q->param($param));
}
Perl is the chainsaw-use it with care, and you can clear a forest in a day.
Aunimeda develops websites and web applications for businesses - corporate sites, e-commerce, portals, and custom platforms.
Contact us to discuss your web project. See also: Web Development, E-commerce Development