Perl
A mature general-purpose scripting language known for text processing, with the large CPAN module archive.
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1 more ways to get Perl
Package managers
- Homebrew
brew install perl
About Perl
Perl is a feature-rich programming language with over 38 years of development, widely used for text processing, system administration scripts and web back ends. It is still actively developed, with regular releases.
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers over 42,000 open-source distributions, and core documentation, FAQs and free online books help with learning. Raku, formerly Perl 6, is a separate sister language rather than a replacement.
Strengths
- Very strong text processing and regular expressions
- Over 42,000 CPAN distributions
- Long history with stable, active development
Limitations
- Terse syntax can be hard to read
- Less common in new projects than Python
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source.
- License
- Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later
- Developer
- The Perl contributors
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Scripting, text processing and maintaining existing Perl systems
- Categories
- Developer tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Perl
Compare allSoftware that can replace Perl for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Python
A general-purpose programming language used for scripting, web backends, data analysis and machine learning.
Python offers readable syntax, a broad standard library and the default ecosystem for data and machine learning work, but it is slower for CPU-heavy tasks and its packaging can confuse.
Ruby
A dynamic, open-source programming language focused on simplicity and programmer productivity.
Ruby is a dynamic scripting language with readable, concise syntax suited to scripting and web development. It replaces Perl's CPAN archive with its own ecosystem under the Ruby license.
PHP
A general-purpose scripting language and interpreter especially suited to web development.
PHP is a scripting language aimed at server-side web development with frequent bug fix releases. Its official Linux and macOS downloads are source releases, so binaries usually come from package managers.
Lua
A lightweight, embeddable scripting language with a small standalone interpreter.
Lua is a small, embeddable scripting language that is quick to learn. It has a much smaller standard library, and the official site distributes only source code.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
ack
A grep-like source code search tool built for programmers working in large code trees.
GNU sed
The GNU stream editor for filtering and transforming text from files or pipelines.
PowerShell
Microsoft's cross-platform automation shell, where commands pass structured objects to each other instead of lines of text.
Xonsh
A cross-platform shell whose language is a superset of Python 3 with shell commands built in.
Oils
A Unix shell project combining OSH, a bash-compatible shell, and YSH, a new shell language.
