On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Ivor Williams wrote: > Just curious, what does perl actually stand for, or is it not an acronym?
<http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html#2000s> ...and scroll down just a bit, with the entries for 2000: The Oxford English Dictionary investigates the origin of the word "Perl" while considering it for an entry in the next edition. Perl will be included and the entry will resemble the entry below. Perl Brit. Perl, perl, irreg. PERL Computing. perl n. , arbitrarily chosen for its positive connotations, with omission of -a- to differentiate it from an existing programming language called Pearl. Coined by Larry Wall in the summer of 1987; the program was publicly released on 18 December of that year. Acronymic expansions of the name (such as Practical Extraction and Report Language and Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister), though found in the earliest documention for the language, were formed after the name had been chosen. Coinage details confirmed by personal communication from L. Wall, May 2000. A high-level interpreted programming language widely used for a variety of tasks and especially for applications running on the World Wide Web. The form Perl is preferred for the language itself; perl is used for the interpreter for the Perl language. 1988 J. Vromans Perl Reference Card. So there you go, right out of [an upcoming edition of] the OED. :) -- Chris Devers "People with machines that think, will in times of crisis, make up stuff and attribute it to me" - "Nikla-nostra-debo"
