Perl

Description: Perl is an open-source scripting language very useful for Web-related programming. Perl is available either thru ActiveState, or as part of the Cygwin environment.

Perl can also be obtained (together with the Apache web server and the PHP language) at IndigoPerl.

History: Perl was created by Larry Wall in 1987. Originally the name stood for "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".
Current stable version is 5.8.7 .

Applications: Perl is a good language for CGI scripting on the WWW. It is optimized for problems that are primarily working with text.

Official Homepage: Perl language Home Page

Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl, comp.lang.perl.announce, comp.lang.perl.misc, comp.lang.perl.moderated, comp.lang.perl.modules, comp.lang.perl.tk

Newsletters/magazines: none known

Related links:
the CPAN archive
Yahoo Perl Directory
Perl Monks page
the Parrot home page
Wikipedia page for Perl