We've all (well, not really...) heard that Perl is at most a backronym, due to the fact that it should have been Pearl in the first place, except that there was already a programming language going by that name and $Larry wanted to avoid confusion.

Now, I've just discovered the HOPL (History of Programming Languages) which is, or aims at being, as complete and full of info and precise (while staying minimal in terms of UI and visual appearance) as possible: for pearl it finds five programming languages (with different capitalizations!) and I wonder which is the one we must thank (and I say so seriously, since I believe that "perl" is much better than "pearl") for the actual naming of our beloved language.

Incidentally (but not too much,) the page for Perl at HOPL is particularly inaccurate, especially if compared with other languages: see e.g. Python or Ruby. Double clicking in any point of a page seemingly turns up a page editing form, but AIUI it's not a wiki just as much as a system for suggesting a change, that will be taken into account or not: maybe it's just me, but I couldn't find at the site any document describing the exact policy in this regard. However I hope that someone (better entitled to do so than I am) will concoct up a more precise page for Perl...

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If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.

In reply to Which Pearl? by blazar

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