It seems like an important item if you're going to converse with other Perl programmers. Calling it PERL instead of Perl is a quick way to get marked as a know-nothing newbie — which is doubly problematic if you're an author of programming instructional texts. I've seen an awful lot of Perl books wherein the author kept calling it PERL.

Then again, you're right: this item is pretty frivolous, in the grand scheme of things.

It's minor, sure, but it drives me batty that I have an infrastructure diagram where it is spelled PERL. In spite of how many times I have told them to change it. I think its a conspiracy to piss me off :-D

no, i'm not paranoid - it's just that they really are out to get me ;-D

Calling it PERL instead of Perl is a quick way to get marked as a know-nothing newbie

%man perl
NAME
      perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
[download]

You're right... only an idiot would consider that an acronym. No wait -- only a perl cultist wouldn't consider that an acronym, because that's exactly what it is, and only severe abuse of one's perceptions and/or the English language itself can change that.

However, not everyone is a perl cultist. Some of us don't believe in abusing the honorific case in English to distinguish a language from it's implementation, because unlike gods and royalty, a mere programming language doesn't deserve genuflection, and to those speakers of the English language, "Perl" is only correct if capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

I realize this place is called Perl Monks, and that some people think it grants them license to turn into foaming at the mouth perl fantatics, but seriously -- denying the very truth before your eyes is the mark of a cultist, not a rational human free of the taint of religion.

Perl *is* an acroynm, because of the very fact it's been billed as such for well over ten years. Just because Pope Larry has decided to pull back from some of his past decrees doesn't undo the past.

Drop the religious fervour; it's not serving any purpose. Be rational, and focus on writing quality code in the language, and follow the original rules for the English language, not PerlSpeak.

I can only assume you're unfamiliar with the term "backronym" — which is what Perl is, rather than a proper acronym. If you don't believe me, ask Mr. Wall.

In fact, if you're interested in getting this all "right", you might wish to refer back to the writings of Mr. Wall, the inventor of Perl and the man who coined the term Perl in the first place. It might also be of interest to note that the term perl, with a lower-case first letter, arose only because that's what the binary executable Perl parser is called in most unix-based implementations.

Perl is a proper name, as are Ruby, Python, Java, Lisp, Prolog, and a slew of other languages — no matter what their various parser binaries are called.

For purposes of knowing the proper terms, it helps to know the history of the terms.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

- apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin

Not this shit again...:(

thor

The only easy day was yesterday

Though I've seen a lot of low-quality "Perl" books, I've never seen a high quality "PERL" one. It's worth remembering.

Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.

No, not that again. There's a big difference between saying it's important to know Perl is not PERL if you're going to participate in the Perl community and saying I wouldn't hire someone for not knowing Perl is not PERL. I suspect I'd be less likely to hire someone that called it PERL on a resume, but not because of the capitalization — it's probably the case that the qualities I'd look for in a candidate would match up with the likelihood of knowing that Perl is not an acronym, though.

In other words, I wouldn't mark you down for not knowing it's properly Perl instead of PERL, but I have a sneaking suspicion that calling it PERL is more likely to be accompanied by a lack of qualities I'd like (such as involvement in open source development communities).

In any case, the point of this is that it's something people should know to get along in the Perl community, not an indictment of people who don't know them. Everybody starts out ignorant: knowledge and wisdom come with (not necessarily formal) education and experience.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

- apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin