Perl Scripts
Perl is one of the many scripting languages in computers that are similar to C language. You will find numerous UNIX facilities in it like SED, awk and tr. Unlike other scripting languages, it is possible to compile Perl before its execution into C code. On compilation, it can be said that Perl works at the same speed of a C program that was precompiled and this is why Perl is considered to be the best choice for the development of interface programs. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl.
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Perl is basically easy to learn and quicker to code than C and C++; but are generally more sophisticated. If you want to reduce compile time with Perl, you can install plug-ins in some servers like Apache which makes Perl permanently loaded in memory. This leads to the faster execution of CGI Perl scripts.
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When created, Perl was considered to be the acronym for “Practical Extraction and Reporting Language’. However Larry Well preferred the usage of upper case ‘Perl’ for the language itself and lower case ‘Perl’ when referring to interpreters and compilers of Perl.
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Perl is basically a programming language that is considered to be stable and used in mission critical projects of both public and private sectors. Perl is supported by numerous operating systems like Unix, Macintosh, Windows and many more. The advantage of Perl is that it incorporates the best features of other languages like C, sed, sh, BASIC and others. Its database integration interface (DBI) supports numerous third party databases that include Oracle, Postgres and Sybase.
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It is possible to use Perl with HTML, XML and other languages and it also supports Unicode. Perl is a language that is Y2K compliant that supports both object oriented and procedural programming. You find that Perl is an extensible language with over 500 third party modules available in the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.
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Today, Perl is considered to be the most popular web programming languages because of its capabilities in text manipulation and its cycle of rapid development. It is very often referred to as the ‘duct tape of the internet.’ with the help of Perl’s CGI pm module; you find the handling of HTML forms rather simple. You can very well handle encrypted web data using Perl; and this also includes e-commerce transactions.
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One of the advantages of Perl being able to be embedded in web servers is that it increases the processing speeds by as much as 2000%. It is because of the mod.Perl that it is possible for the Apache web server to embed a Perl interpreter. With the help of Perl’s DBI, it is possible to make web-database integration rather easy.
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