Questions tagged [perl]

Perl is a procedural, high-level, general-purpose, dynamic programming language, known for its native support of regular expressions and string parsing capabilities. Please use this tag for questions about Perl in general. For things related to the new (but related) language Raku (formerly "Perl 6"), please use the raku tag. For Perl-style regular expressions in other languages, use the regex tag, or, if they are based on the PCRE library, the pcre tag.

Perl is a highly capable, feature-rich programming language with over 25 years of development. Perl runs on over 100 platforms from portables to mainframes and is suitable for both rapid prototyping and large-scale development projects.

Perl can also refer to a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. The languages in this family include Perl and Raku (formerly known as Perl 6). For Raku-related questions, please use the tag raku. For "Perl-style" regular expressions in other languages, often based on the PCRE library, do not use tag perl, but tag regex or a more specific tag such as tag pcre.

Related Resources

Official Perl documentation
PerlMonks (aka "The Monastery") - Perl community website with discussion topics, tutorials, reviews, and code snippets.
/r/perl - A subreddit for Perl discussion
jobs.perl.org - Perl jobs
Perl Weekly - Weekly curated news round-up in e-mail and RSS
Perl Mongers - Perl user groups
perl-tutorial.org - collects up-to-date Perl tutorials and warns about outdated ones
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network - The canonical location for Perl code and modules
MetaCPAN - A modern CPAN search site, with an open source backend.
Perl Iron Man - An aggregator of Perl blog posts from all over the world
Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes
Freenode#perl - Freenode IRC channel for Perl help and discussion
irc.perl.org - Perl IRC network

Perl-related Blogs and Bloggers

blogs.perl.org - Hosted site for Perl-related blogging
$perl->buzz - Perl-related news roundup
Perl Maven - Articles, tutorials, screencasts about Perl
The Effective Perler - A blog by brian d foy
ν42 - Sinan Ünür's blog
Perl Is My Cocaine - Tudor Constantin's blog

Free Perl Programming Books

Perl Programming Books

Related tags

cpan The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
dbi Database-independent interface for Perl
dbix-class An object-relational mapper (ORM) for accessing DB rows as OO style objects
mod-perl Integrate Perl and the Apache web server
moose A post-modern object system for Perl 5
catalyst An elegant web application framework
mojolicious Perl real-time web framework
dancer A micro web application framework, originally inspired by the Sinatra framework in Ruby.
raku A new language in the Perl family
rakudo Raku implementation that targets MoarVM, the JVM, and the Parrot virtual machine
pugs Raku implemented in Haskell
perl-module Extensions to Perl
tkx, perltk Perl interfaces to Tk.
dist-zilla An increasingly popular Module Authoring and Release tool-kit.
pcre Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE)
perlbrew A tool to manage multiple Perl installations in your $HOME directory.
perl-data-structures Data structures in Perl.
pdl Perl Data Language.
strawberry-perl Perl environment for Microsoft Windows.
perl-pod, perldoc Perl documentation
perl-tidy, perl-critic Perl utilities
devel-cover Code coverage metrics for Perl

Date & Time

Libraries for working with dates and times

Devices

Libraries to talk to physical devices

Device::Modem - Talk to modem devices connected via a serial port
Device::Onkyo - Control Onkyo/Integra AV equipment via LAN or serial https://metacpan.org/pod/Device::Modem https://metacpan.org/pod/Device::Onkyo

DevOps Tools

Libraries that help when you want to deploy software across networks on several hosts that are working across computer networks

Rex - Remote Execution

FAQs

Frequently ask questions

Why doesn't my Perl one-liner work on Windows?

More information

Perl Wikipedia Article

67820 questions

114

votes

12 answers

Regular expression to validate username

I'm trying to create a regular expression to validate usernames against these criteria: Only contains alphanumeric characters, underscore and dot. Underscore and dot can't be at the end or start of a username (e.g _username / username_ / .username…

java php html regex perl

asked Aug 18 '12 at 11:39

mohsen dorparasti

8,107
7
41
61

113

votes

7 answers

What is the proper way to check if a string is empty in Perl?

I have been using this code to check if a string is empty: if ($str == "") { // ... } And also the opposite with the not equals operator... if ($str != "") { // ... } This seems to work (I think), but I'm not sure it's the correct way, or if…

perl string comparison

asked Jan 11 '10 at 23:16

Nick Bolton

38,276
70
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votes

8 answers

Why use strict and warnings?

It seems to me that many of the questions in the Perl tag could be solved if people would use: use strict; use warnings; I think some people consider these to be akin to training wheels, or unnecessary complications, which is clearly not true,…

perl

asked Nov 05 '11 at 23:04

TLP

66,756
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votes

4 answers

How are nested capturing groups numbered in regular expressions?

Is there a defined behavior for how regular expressions should handle the capturing behavior of nested parentheses? More specifically, can you reasonably expect that different engines will capture the outer parentheses in the first position, and…

java .net regex perl language-agnostic

asked Aug 21 '09 at 19:54

Alana Storm

164,128
91
395
599

111

votes

6 answers

Best way to iterate through a Perl array

Which is the best implementation(in terms of speed and memory usage) for iterating through a Perl array? Is there any better way? (@Array need not be retained). Implementation 1 foreach (@Array) { SubRoutine($_); } Implementation…

arrays perl iteration

asked May 07 '12 at 18:43

Jean

21,665
24
69
119

108

votes

9 answers

How can I remove text within parentheses with a regex?

I'm trying to handle a bunch of files, and I need to alter then to remove extraneous information in the filenames; notably, I'm trying to remove text inside parentheses. For example: filename = "Example_file_(extra_descriptor).ext" and I want to…

python regex perl

asked Mar 12 '09 at 18:56

Technical Bard

4,395
7
31
32

108

votes

9 answers

What is the meaning of @_ in Perl?

perl variables

asked Dec 30 '10 at 14:42

Andrei

1,862
4
15
15

108

votes

27 answers

How do I get a list of installed CPAN modules?

Aside from trying perldoc individually for any CPAN module that takes my fancy or going through the file system and looking at the directories, I have no idea what modules we have installed. What's the easiest way to just get a big…

perl perl-module cpan

asked Sep 22 '08 at 15:15

David McLaughlin

5,108
4
34
35

107

votes

9 answers

How can Perl's print add a newline by default?

In Perl most of my print statements take the form print "hello." . "\n"; Is there a nice way to avoid keeping all the pesky "\n"s lying around? I know I could make a new function such as myprint that automatically appends \n, but it would be nice…

perl

asked May 24 '10 at 18:40

Mike

58,961
76
175
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106

votes

6 answers

Using output from a previous job in a new one in a GitHub Action

For (mainly) pedagogical reasons, I'm trying to run this workflow in GitHub actions: name: "We Perl" on: issues: types: [opened, edited, milestoned] jobs: seasonal_greetings: runs-on: windows-latest steps: - name: Maybe…

perl github-actions

asked Dec 04 '19 at 11:47

jjmerelo

22,578
8
40
86

106

votes

11 answers

Easy way to print Perl array? (with a little formatting)

Is there an easy way to print out a Perl array with commas in between each element? Writing a for loop to do it is pretty easy but not quite elegant....if that makes sense.

perl

asked Apr 21 '11 at 07:48

funk-shun

4,331
11
32
41

106

votes

4 answers

How can I combine hashes in Perl?

What is the best way to combine both hashes into %hash1? I always know that %hash2 and %hash1 always have unique keys. I would also prefer a single line of code if possible. $hash1{'1'} = 'red'; $hash1{'2'} = 'blue'; $hash2{'3'} =…

perl dictionary hash merge

asked Dec 08 '08 at 16:13

mleykamp

1,356
2
9
11

106

votes

6 answers

Differences between Perl and PHP

I'm planning to learn Perl 5 and as I have only used PHP until now, I wanted to know a bit about how the languages differ from each other. As PHP started out as a set of "Perl hacks" it has obviously cloned some of Perls features. What are the main…

php perl

asked Mar 28 '10 at 22:03

lok

1,077
2
8
3

105

votes

8 answers

How can I troubleshoot my Perl CGI script?

I have a Perl CGI script that isn't working and I don't know how to start narrowing down the problem. What can I do? Note: I'm adding the question because I really want to add my very lengthy answer to Stack Overflow. I keep externally linking to…

perl cgi

asked Jan 29 '10 at 20:43

brian d foy

129,424
31
207
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103

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11 answers

Which version of Perl should I use on Windows?

The win32.perl.org web site provides references to several Perl distributions for MS Windows. For a long time I have been using ActivePerl from ActiveState but recently I switched to Strawberry Perl. IMHO The only advantage that Active Perl still…

windows perl debugging strawberry-perl

asked Sep 16 '08 at 11:53

szabgab

6,202
11
50
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