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Perl vs Python: catalog facts
Perl	Python
Free Free and open source.	Free Free and open source under the Python Software Foundation Licence, a permissive licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Very strong text processing and regular expressions Over 42,000 CPAN distributions	Readable syntax that makes it the usual first language and easy to return to The standard library covers a lot without any third-party packages
Terse syntax can be hard to read Less common in new projects than Python	Much slower than compiled languages for CPU-heavy work The global interpreter lock limits threading, though recent versions are addressing it
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later	License: Python-2.0
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026

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