Which companies still use Perl?

Perl is a mature and versatile programming language that has been widely used since the 1990s for everything from system administration to web development and bioinformatics. While newer languages like Python and Ruby have gained popularity, Perl remains actively used in many companies and industries even today (2024).

Companies Still Using Perl

Despite perceptions that Perl is outdated, many companies continue to rely on Perl for mission-critical systems, legacy applications, and automation scripts. Some notable companies and sectors where Perl remains in use include:

• Booking.com – Known for using Perl extensively in its backend for web services and infrastructure.
• Amazon – Early Perl use for automation and various internal tools; may have transitioned in some areas but Perl still exists in legacy systems.
• BBC – Uses Perl for content management and middleware tasks.
• Cisco – Employs Perl for network automation and testing scripts.
• Banks and Finance Companies – Many financial institutions use Perl for data manipulation, reporting, and ETL due to existing large Perl codebases.
• Bioinformatics Companies – Perl’s text processing strengths keep it popular for genomic data parsing and pipelines.
• System Administration – IT departments continue to use Perl scripts for automation and managing Unix/Linux systems.

The key reasons Perl persists include:

• TMTOWTDI (“There’s more than one way to do it”) philosophy allows flexible scripting styles.
• Powerful built-in support for regular expressions and text processing.
• Huge existing codebases that would be costly to rewrite.
• CPAN modules providing robust, reusable components.
• Perl 5 remains maintained and Perl 6 (Raku) is a continuation of the language's evolution.

Perl Context and Sigils Example – Demonstrating Practical Perl Use

Here is a simple runnable Perl script illustrating how to use Perl’s rich syntax and sigils to iterate over a list (array). This demonstrates Perl’s scalar ($) and array (@) sigils and context awareness, which are part of what makes Perl scripts concise and expressive in areas like automation and data processing.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# Example: Print a list of company names still using Perl
my @perl_companies = (
    "Booking.com",
    "Amazon",
    "BBC",
    "Cisco",
    "Goldman Sachs",
    "Bioinformatics Firm"
);

# Scalar context: length of the array
my $count = scalar @perl_companies;

print "Companies still using Perl (Total: $count):\n";

# Iterate over array with foreach
foreach my $company (@perl_companies) {
    print "- $company\n";
}

Explanation:

• @perl_companies is an array variable holding a list of company names.
• $count is a scalar that captures the number of elements in the array using scalar @perl_companies.
• foreach iterates through the array, assigning each value to the scalar $company due to Perl’s scalar context.
• Perl’s sigils ($, @) distinguish the context of variables.

Final Notes

While many companies have diversified programming languages, Perl remains a practical and powerful choice especially for text-heavy processing, system administration tasks, and legacy systems. New Perl projects may be less common in web front-ends but Perl's flexibility and mature ecosystem keep it relevant for backend scripts, automation, and bioinformatics.