Since there's no formal specification you cannot cite the specification. If I were in the position you are in, I'd do one of the following:
  1. Cite Programming Perl. The advantage is that it's a book, so you can include authors, publisher, dates, ISBN, etc and, if necessary, point to page numbers. It also has Larry Wall as one of the authors, and its text is highly regarded. The disadvantage is that it describes perl 5.6 and that's likely not the version you worked with.
  2. Cite the URL of the source tarball. This is the most accurate, assuming you didn't use a Perl that was modified by your vendor. It does have all the disadvantages of URL citing though: it's non-traditional, the resource may go disappear, or worse, the URL may point to something else than it did at the moment you wrote the citation.
  3. Cite the p5p mailing list (and/or its archive). Very unorthodox, but that is the (public) place where perl5 development happens.
  4. Cite it as: "Larry Wall", [pumking of the version you used], et al.: "The Perl Programming Language, version XXX", [year of its release]. Possibly with a URL to the tarball.
Thinking about it, I probably would go for option 4.

In reply to Re: Do you cite a programining lang? by JavaFan
in thread Do you cite a programining lang? by BioNrd

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