1. Install perl distribution from perl.org, download here

or

you can also downalod perl from activestate.com which comes few additional perl modules.

2. To write perl programs you need a text editor or perl IDE. you can use simple notepad or textpad, or you can also perl IDE such as a Open Perl IDE or Perl Express. I personally use advance notepad called NotePad++, which is opensource and free software.

3.  Now, create a file called testperl.pl, perls files end with .pl file extension.

4. Write the below statement in the created testperl.pl file

print “Hello World n”;

5. Open the command prompt, and go to the folder where you have a testperl.pl and run the below command

perl testperl.pl

6. Bravo! now you could see “Hello World” on command prompt console.

Perl history and Facts

• Perl was initially developed by Larry Wall in 1987.
• Perl is a open source software licensed under GNU public license
• It was made as a unix scripting language for reporting process.
• Perl is also called as the swiss army chainsaw of programming languages due to its flexible and adaptable nature.
• Perl  2 released in 1988 with better and improved regular exprssion engine
• In 1989, perl 3 was released with added feature of handling binary data streams.
• In 1991, perl reference documentations has been published, it is also called as ‘Camel Book’ and version was renamed to Perl 4.
• Perl interpreter was completely rewritten and released in 1994 as Perl verison 5.
• Perl 5.x version is the most widely used as of now

Perl Features

• Perl is a interpreted and dynamic programming language
• Perl is stable and cross-platform programming language.
• It has inherited the best features from C, Basic and other programming languages.
• Perl supports Unicode character encoding for foreign letters.
• Other interesting feature is, it supports both procedural and object oriented programming.
• Perl is extensible and can be integrated with C and C++.
• Perl is best known for powerful text processing engine.
• And perl was known to be the most popular web programming language until PHP supercedes it.

Probably in my next perl article, I will talk about perl programming basics with few sample code.

Don’t forget to say what do you think about perl, find comment section below to post your comments.