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From `perldoc perl`: """Perl officially stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language, except when it doesn't."""
by jumpingmice 7y ago
From `perldoc perl`:
"""Perl officially stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language, except when it doesn't."""
- nocman 7y agoIt seems like you are arguing that because it is in the official docs, that is where the name 'Perl' came from, but that is not accurate. autarch is right, "Practical Extraction and Report Language" is a backronym --the language was named 'Perl' first, and that acronym (and others) were devised later ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name ). Larry was originally going to include the 'a' and name the language 'Pearl'. However, at the time there was already a programming language named 'Pearl', so he changed the name to Perl ( again, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name ). This can be verified from multiple sources, including the "Learning Perl" book ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#cite_note-57 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#cite_note-57 ).
- jumpingmice 7y agoIt can be a backronym and the official name at the same time. Your assertions are all true but your logic is faulty.
- nocman 7y agoSorry, just got back to this. I guess that depends on whether you consider an obviously tongue-in-cheek backronym to be "the official name". We obviously disagree on this point.