Skip to Main Content
Idaho State University home

Glossary

Filter:
# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z All
R
R&D
RAC
RAM
RAT
RC4
RD
RED
REL
RF
RFC
RFE
RFP
RKV
RL
RMR
RO
ROM
RPM
RQT
RSA
Rsh
RSN
RTI
RTM
RTS
Run
RWX
Perl
  • /perl/ n. [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a. k. a Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall <lwall@jpl. nasa. gov>, author of `patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles awk, but is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of `sed(1)' and shell and a comprehensive UNIX system-call interface. UNIX sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, increasingly consider it one of the languages of choice. Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of UNIX programming.