Why is it called Perl?

The name Perl has an interesting origin that reflects the language's creator Larry Wall’s philosophy and humor. According to Larry Wall, Perl originally stood for "Practical Extraction and Report Language." However, this expansion was somewhat retrospective and informal—Larry preferred the simplicity of the name “Perl” itself rather than an acronym. Over time, Perl has come to be more loosely interpreted as a language designed to be practical, powerful, and flexible.

Interestingly, Larry Wall chose the name because he liked the word “pearl” (a precious gem) but opted for the simpler spelling “Perl.” The lowercase letter e instead of a was intentional. The name evokes something small but valuable, which fits the language’s philosophy of being a flexible and concise "Swiss Army knife" for text processing and more.

In Larry's own words from early documentation, “I chose 'Perl' as the name because it’s short, easy to type, and easy to remember, and it emphasizes that the language is practical and elegant.” This aligns well with Perl’s famous mantra "There's more than one way to do it" (TMTOWTDI), highlighting the language's flexibility and pragmatism instead of strict formalism.

Perl’s Naming Context in Code

To illustrate the name’s spirit practically, here’s a simple Perl program that prints a little message about Perl’s name, showing Perl’s easy-to-read syntax and built-in string capabilities. Note the use of the print function, scalar variables indicated by the $ sigil, and double-quoted strings that interpolate variables.

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

my $name = "Perl";
my $meaning = "Practical Extraction and Report Language";

print "$name, named by Larry Wall, originally stood for \"$meaning\".\n";
print "It's also a nod to a pearl, a small but valuable gem.\n";
print "According to the Perl philosophy: There's more than one way to do it!\n";

This snippet uses core Perl features:

• my declares a lexical variable.
• $ is the scalar sigil, indicating single values like strings or numbers.
• print outputs to STDOUT, with double quotes allowing variable interpolation.

Summary

• “Perl” is not strictly an acronym but originally stood for "Practical Extraction and Report Language" informally.
• Larry Wall deliberately chose a short, easy-to-type name evocative of a “pearl,” something small and valuable.
• The name reflects Perl’s design goals: practical usefulness, flexibility, and elegance.
• Perl’s flexible philosophy is echoed in the motto “There’s more than one way to do it.”

Perl’s name itself is a small window into its identity—versatile, pragmatic, and approachable, just like the language’s syntax and functionality. If you run the above code with perl , you can see this explained in a simple script, demonstrating Perl’s hallmark readability and ease of expression.