Perl history

[Piers Harding]

Wow!

That should be forwarded to the Oxford English Dictionary people!
at:
http://www.oed.com/public/readers/submitform.dtl

Cheers.


On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 05:09:58PM +1000, Paul Fenwick wrote:
> G'day Tim/Melb.PM,
> 
> On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:26:46PM +1000, Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
> 
> > > respelling of PEARL, arbitrarily chosen for its positive connotations".
> > 
> > 	Does anyone know if this is correct?  I'd always assumed that the 
> > Practical Extraction and Reporting name was designed at the same time.  
> 
> 	The name then became "Pearl", which mutated into our present-day
> 	"Perl", partly because Larry saw a reference to another
> 	language called PEARL, but mostly becausehe's too lazy
> 	to type five letters all the time.  And, of course, so that
> 	Perl could be used as a four-letter word.  (You'll note,
> 	however, the vestiges of the former spelling in the acronym's
> 	gloss: "Practical Extraction /And/ Report Language".)
> 		
> 		-- Camel Book, 3rd Ed, page 646.
> 
> My understanding of the "positive connotations" is that all good
> Unix commands are four-letters long.  ;)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 	Paul
> 
> 
> -- 
> Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
> Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
> Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681