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in reply to Re: Re: Perl falls victim to shifting trends(Opinions/Comments From The Other Side)
in thread Perl falls victim to shifting trends

> Actually Perl isn't an acronym, that is a backronym.

Interesting. I've always known that I've been programming in Perl and not PERL. But I always assumed that the name came from "Practical Extraction..." or maybe "Pathologically Eclectic..." Does anyone know the story of how Larry chose the name Perl, if it's not an acronym?

It might even be worth passing this info along to the maintainers of the lexicon, since its entry for Perl is under the same misimpression I was...

laughingboy

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Re: Origins of the name Perl?
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 23, 2002 at 23:56 UTC
    Actually, Perl comes from Pearl, which was what Larry used after he dropped the idea of using Gloria, his wife's first name, as name for the language. But Pearl is indeed a backronym for Practical Extraction And Report Language.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

      Furthermore, Larry switched from "Pearl" to "Perl" after finding out "Pearl" was already the name of an existing language. (Legends go that it's the name of a language to do graphics in - it may be so, but I know there's also a language to write real time programs in that's called "Pearl").

      Abigail

        Hi,

        Pearl is in fact the name of a (not-very-elegant) programming language you may use for robotics. My first contact with Perl was indeed, when I learned Perl and then came into the course, where they expected people to know Pearl. Man - I nearly collapsed. Then - they allowed to program either in C or Pearl.

        Me and a guy took the C, the rest of the class Pearl, we finished 90% of the exercises, the Pearl-people 30-40%. So you really aren't interested in this language. :-)

        Oh well - if you are: Look here

        Bye
         PetaMem

Re: Origins of the name Perl?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 23, 2002 at 21:58 UTC
    All that I know is that the FAQ says that it isn't an acronym. I figure that they should know.

    Oh. And the Camel mentions that Larry tried both Gloria and Pearl as names before settling on Perl.

Re: Origins of the name Perl?
by jdporter (Paladin) on May 03, 2016 at 16:03 UTC
Re: Origins of the name Perl?
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 24, 2002 at 00:31 UTC
    What? ESR's lexicon wrong? Horrors! How could that possibly be?