The Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) was created by Larry Wall and is designed specifically to process text. It was originally founded on the UNIX platform, and later on was ported onto other platforms. The porting effort required for moving Perl scripts between different platforms is very minimal.
It is a very simple language to learn as Types and Structures are easy to understand. It borrows most of its syntax from C and can be extended in a modular fashion. As a text processor, Perl is especially useful in parsing and report generation. Perl is valuable for both dynamic Web page generation and server task automation.
Perl is categorized as an open-source language as the sources are freely available to the programming public. Perl 5.8.4 for NetWare is based on the corresponding Perl open-source code base on CPAN.
The Perl language is maintained and updated by a team of core developers known as the Perl Porters. You can learn about the latest Perl Porters developments by visiting The Perl Porters Page.