by Mishra Planeswalker

Created on: October 12, 2010

Perl is a programming language that was originally developed in 1987 by Larry Wall.  This language is often used in introductory programming courses because of the rather loose requirements of the language, that is, each command is relatively straightforward.  Perl is an imperative programming language, which works on mutable data (meaning it can be directly changed), as compared to a functional programming language which is much more complex and directly related to higher-level mathematics.   

Think of any piece of software you use.  This program is written in terms of numbers and strings (lines of text), and not much else.  It is how the program manipulates these ‘variables’ that defines it’s function and purpose.  

Before you get started programming in Perl, you’ll have to download a few pieces of free software.  The first is a Perl distribution.  The community edition of ActivePerl from ActiveState is free of charge and available for all operating systems, and it is available here: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads.   

The second thing you’ll need is a program in which to do your developing.  The most basic of these is a text editor (such as Notepad or TextEdit), and every modern operating comes with one.  Note that a word processor such as Microsoft Word is not a suitable editor, as any file saved with such a program comes bundled with a whole lot of hidden formatting code that gets in the way of the program you’re trying to write.  It is recommended that you get a more advanced text editor which will help you while coding, such as underlining your mistyped code.  Komodo Edit is an excellent example, also published by ActiveState, available here: http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit.

If you plan to be doing a great deal of programming, you might consider installing an IDE (Integrated Development Environment).  This means that you don’t have to use the command line interface (CLI) to run your program and it contains a number of built in tools which make managing your programs much easier.  One of the most popular IDEs is Eclipse, available at http://www.epic-ide.org/download.php.

I already outlined that everything in a language is fundamentally an extension of numbers and strings.  

In Perl (and any programming language) you will have to work with variables.  In perl, there are only 4 types of variables,

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