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-=head1 NAME
-
-perlfaq1 - General Questions About Perl
-
-=head1 DESCRIPTION
-
-This section of the FAQ answers very general, high-level questions
-about Perl.
-
-=head2 What is Perl?
-
-Perl is a high-level programming language with an eclectic heritage
-written by Larry Wall and a cast of thousands.
-
-Perl's process, file, and text manipulation facilities make it
-particularly well-suited for tasks involving quick prototyping, system
-utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access,
-graphical programming, networking, and web programming.
-
-Perl derives from the ubiquitous C programming language and to a
-lesser extent from sed, awk, the Unix shell, and many other tools
-and languages.
-
-These strengths make it especially popular with web developers
-and system administrators. Mathematicians, geneticists, journalists,
-managers and many other people also use Perl.
-
-=head2 Who supports Perl? Who develops it? Why is it free?
-
-The original culture of the pre-populist Internet and the deeply-held
-beliefs of Perl's author, Larry Wall, gave rise to the free and open
-distribution policy of Perl. Perl is supported by its users. The
-core, the standard Perl library, the optional modules, and the
-documentation you're reading now were all written by volunteers.
-
-The core development team (known as the Perl Porters)
-are a group of highly altruistic individuals committed to
-producing better software for free than you could hope to purchase for
-money. You may snoop on pending developments via the
-L<archives|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/>
-or read the L<faq|http://dev.perl.org/perl5/docs/p5p-faq.html>,
-or you can subscribe to the mailing list by sending
-perl5-porters-subscribe@perl.org a subscription request
-(an empty message with no subject is fine).
-
-While the GNU project includes Perl in its distributions, there's no
-such thing as "GNU Perl". Perl is not produced nor maintained by the
-Free Software Foundation. Perl's licensing terms are also more open
-than GNU software's tend to be.
-
-You can get commercial support of Perl if you wish, although for most
-users the informal support will more than suffice. See the answer to
-"Where can I buy a commercial version of Perl?" for more information.
-
-=head2 Which version of Perl should I use?
-
-(contributed by brian d foy)
-
-There is often a matter of opinion and taste, and there isn't any one
-answer that fits everyone. In general, you want to use either the current
-stable release, or the stable release immediately prior to that one.
-Currently, those are perl5.14.x and perl5.12.x, respectively.
-
-Beyond that, you have to consider several things and decide which is best
-for you.
-
-=over 4
-
-=item *
-
-If things aren't broken, upgrading perl may break them (or at least issue
-new warnings).
-
-=item *
-
-The latest versions of perl have more bug fixes.
-
-=item *
-
-The Perl community is geared toward supporting the most recent releases,
-so you'll have an easier time finding help for those.
-
-=item *
-
-Versions prior to perl5.004 had serious security problems with buffer
-overflows, and in some cases have CERT advisories (for instance,
-L<http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1997-17.html> ).
-
-=item *
-
-The latest versions are probably the least deployed and widely tested, so
-you may want to wait a few months after their release and see what
-problems others have if you are risk averse.
-
-=item *
-
-The immediate, previous releases (i.e. perl5.8.x ) are usually maintained
-for a while, although not at the same level as the current releases.
-
-=item *
-
-No one is actively supporting Perl 4. Ten years ago it was a dead
-camel carcass (according to this document). Now it's barely a skeleton
-as its whitewashed bones have fractured or eroded.
-
-=item *
-
-The current leading implementation of Perl 6, Rakudo, released a "useful,
-usable, 'early adopter'" distribution of Perl 6 (called Rakudo Star) in July of
-2010. Please see L<http://rakudo.org/> for more information.
-
-=item *
-
-There are really two tracks of perl development: a maintenance version
-and an experimental version. The maintenance versions are stable, and
-have an even number as the minor release (i.e. perl5.10.x, where 10 is the
-minor release). The experimental versions may include features that
-don't make it into the stable versions, and have an odd number as the
-minor release (i.e. perl5.9.x, where 9 is the minor release).
-
-=back
-
-=head2 What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?
-
-In short, Perl 4 is the parent to both Perl 5 and Perl 6. Perl 5 is the older
-sibling, and though they are different languages, someone who knows one will
-spot many similarities in the other.
-
-The number after Perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release
-of the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language. Each
-major version has significant differences that earlier versions cannot
-support.
-
-The current major release of Perl is Perl 5, first released in
-1994. It can run scripts from the previous major release, Perl 4
-(March 1991), but has significant differences.
-
-Perl 6 is a reinvention of Perl, it is a language in the same lineage but
-not compatible. The two are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Perl 6 is
-not meant to replace Perl 5, and vice versa. See L</"What is Perl 6?"> below
-to find out more.
-
-See L<perlhist> for a history of Perl revisions.
-
-=head2 What is Perl 6?
-
-Perl 6 was I<originally> described as the community's rewrite of Perl 5.
-Development started in 2002; syntax and design work continue to this day.
-As the language has evolved, it has become clear that it is a separate
-language, incompatible with Perl 5 but in the same language family.
-
-Contrary to popular belief, Perl 6 and Perl 5 peacefully coexist with one
-another. Perl 6 has proven to be a fascinating source of ideas for those
-using Perl 5 (the L<Moose> object system is a well-known example). There is
-overlap in the communities, and this overlap fosters the tradition of sharing
-and borrowing that have been instrumental to Perl's success. The current
-leading implementation of Perl 6 is Rakudo, and you can learn more about
-it at L<http://rakudo.org>.
-
-If you want to learn more about Perl 6, or have a desire to help in
-the crusade to make Perl a better place then read the Perl 6 developers
-page at L<http://www.perl6.org/> and get involved.
-
-"We're really serious about reinventing everything that needs reinventing."
---Larry Wall
-
-=head2 How stable is Perl?
-
-Production releases, which incorporate bug fixes and new functionality,
-are widely tested before release. Since the 5.000 release, we have
-averaged about one production release per year.
-
-The Perl development team occasionally make changes to the
-internal core of the language, but all possible efforts are made toward
-backward compatibility.
-
-=head2 Is Perl difficult to learn?
-
-No, Perl is easy to start L<learning|http://learn.perl.org/> --and easy to keep learning. It looks
-like most programming languages you're likely to have experience
-with, so if you've ever written a C program, an awk script, a shell
-script, or even a BASIC program, you're already partway there.
-
-Most tasks only require a small subset of the Perl language. One of
-the guiding mottos for Perl development is "there's more than one way
-to do it" (TMTOWTDI, sometimes pronounced "tim toady"). Perl's
-learning curve is therefore shallow (easy to learn) and long (there's
-a whole lot you can do if you really want).
-
-Finally, because Perl is frequently (but not always, and certainly not by
-definition) an interpreted language, you can write your programs and test
-them without an intermediate compilation step, allowing you to experiment
-and test/debug quickly and easily. This ease of experimentation flattens
-the learning curve even more.
-
-Things that make Perl easier to learn: Unix experience, almost any kind
-of programming experience, an understanding of regular expressions, and
-the ability to understand other people's code. If there's something you
-need to do, then it's probably already been done, and a working example is
-usually available for free. Don't forget Perl modules, either.
-They're discussed in Part 3 of this FAQ, along with L<CPAN|http://www.cpan.org/>, which is
-discussed in Part 2.
-
-=head2 How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?
-
-Perl can be used for almost any coding problem, even ones which require
-integrating specialist C code for extra speed. As with any tool it can
-be used well or badly. Perl has many strengths, and a few weaknesses,
-precisely which areas are good and bad is often a personal choice.
-
-When choosing a language you should also be influenced by the
-L<resources|http://www.cpan.org/>, L<testing culture|http://www.cpantesters.org/>
-and L<community|http://www.perl.org/community.html> which surrounds it.
-
-For comparisons to a specific language it is often best to create
-a small project in both languages and compare the results, make sure
-to use all the L<resources|http://www.cpan.org/> of each language,
-as a language is far more than just it's syntax.
-
-=head2 Can I do [task] in Perl?
-
-Perl is flexible and extensible enough for you to use on virtually any
-task, from one-line file-processing tasks to large, elaborate systems.
-
-For many people, Perl serves as a great replacement for shell scripting.
-For others, it serves as a convenient, high-level replacement for most of
-what they'd program in low-level languages like C or C++. It's ultimately
-up to you (and possibly your management) which tasks you'll use Perl
-for and which you won't.
-
-If you have a library that provides an API, you can make any component
-of it available as just another Perl function or variable using a Perl
-extension written in C or C++ and dynamically linked into your main
-perl interpreter. You can also go the other direction, and write your
-main program in C or C++, and then link in some Perl code on the fly,
-to create a powerful application. See L<perlembed>.
-
-That said, there will always be small, focused, special-purpose
-languages dedicated to a specific problem domain that are simply more
-convenient for certain kinds of problems. Perl tries to be all things
-to all people, but nothing special to anyone. Examples of specialized
-languages that come to mind include prolog and matlab.
-
-=head2 When shouldn't I program in Perl?
-
-One good reason is when you already have an existing
-application written in another language that's all done (and done
-well), or you have an application language specifically designed for a
-certain task (e.g. prolog, make).
-
-If you find that you need to speed up a specific part of a Perl
-application (not something you often need) you may want to use C,
-but you can access this from your Perl code with L<perlxs>.
-
-=head2 What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?
-
-"Perl" is the name of the language. Only the "P" is capitalized.
-The name of the interpreter (the program which runs the Perl script)
-is "perl" with a lowercase "p".
-
-You may or may not choose to follow this usage. But never write "PERL",
-because perl is not an acronym.
-
-=head2 What is a JAPH?
-
-(contributed by brian d foy)
-
-JAPH stands for "Just another Perl hacker,", which Randal Schwartz used
-to sign email and usenet messages starting in the late 1980s. He
-previously used the phrase with many subjects ("Just another x hacker,"),
-so to distinguish his JAPH, he started to write them as Perl programs:
-
- print "Just another Perl hacker,";
-
-Other people picked up on this and started to write clever or obfuscated
-programs to produce the same output, spinning things quickly out of
-control while still providing hours of amusement for their creators and
-readers.
-
-CPAN has several JAPH programs at L<http://www.cpan.org/misc/japh>.
-
-=head2 How can I convince others to use Perl?
-
-(contributed by brian d foy)
-
-Appeal to their self interest! If Perl is new (and thus scary) to them,
-find something that Perl can do to solve one of their problems. That
-might mean that Perl either saves them something (time, headaches, money)
-or gives them something (flexibility, power, testability).
-
-In general, the benefit of a language is closely related to the skill of
-the people using that language. If you or your team can be faster,
-better, and stronger through Perl, you'll deliver more value. Remember,
-people often respond better to what they get out of it. If you run
-into resistance, figure out what those people get out of the other
-choice and how Perl might satisfy that requirement.
-
-You don't have to worry about finding or paying for Perl; it's freely
-available and several popular operating systems come with Perl. Community
-support in places such as Perlmonks ( L<http://www.perlmonks.com> )
-and the various Perl mailing lists ( L<http://lists.perl.org> ) means that
-you can usually get quick answers to your problems.
-
-Finally, keep in mind that Perl might not be the right tool for every
-job. You're a much better advocate if your claims are reasonable and
-grounded in reality. Dogmatically advocating anything tends to make
-people discount your message. Be honest about possible disadvantages
-to your choice of Perl since any choice has trade-offs.
-
-You might find these links useful:
-
-=over 4
-
-=item * L<http://www.perl.org/about.html>
-
-=item * L<http://perltraining.com.au/whyperl.html>
-
-=back
-
-=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-
-Copyright (c) 1997-2010 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
-other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
-
-This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
-under the same terms as Perl itself.
-
-Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public
-domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code and any
-derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for profit as you
-see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would
-be courteous but is not required.