What is Perl?
written by Paul DuBois
Perl is a general purpose scripting language, but has achieved special prominence in certain application areas. One of these is Web scripting, where Perl is probably the most popular language in use today. This popularity is due largely to the strength of its text processing capabilities, which Perl makes easy. However, Perl is just as much at home running command line or GUI scripts as in a Web environment. It is useful for writing everything from report generators to graphical tools to interactive Web-based applications.
Perl's popularity means that many programmers are already familiar with it and fluent in its use. If you have programming staff, it is very likely that you already have people who use it on a daily basis.
Another particular advantage offered by Perl is the wealth of add-on software available for it in the form of modules that provide additional capabilities. The CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) implements the support structure for access to all of this software. It's an extensive resource that saves you time and effort by providing code that you don't have to write yourself.
One of the most important database-related module in the CPAN is DBI, which provides database access from within Perl scripts to several engines in a database-independent fashion. DBI provides a standard programming interface to developers so you need not be concerned with database-dependent details. (Those details are handled behind the scenes by database-specific modules that support individual engines.) This approach allows you to write scripts that access a database easily and that can be ported to and from other databases with a minimum of effort.
Learn more! We suggest these sites:
- www.symbolstone.org/technology/perl/DBI
- www.perl.org
- cpan.perl.org
For more hints and answers to frequently asked questions, visit our Tech Library. | 
