Web Design: Perl

Perl is the web scripting language of choice on Vicnet's web servers. Initially called "Gloria", and then "Pearl", then "Perl" - Perl stands for "Practical Extraction and Report Language". It was first written by Larry Wall in 1986. It is a powerful text processing language whose primary purpose is data manipulation through regular expressions.

Vicnet has several provided Perl scripts for all customers. At present they are:

• FormMail (LPM NMS implementation)

Virtual Web Server (VWS) customers on Vicnet also have the option of supplying their own Perl scripts.

For those looking for more information on Perl, computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates publish the authoritive Perl reference book (as Larry Wall is one of the authors), Programming Perl, also known as "The Camel Book" due to the picture of a camel on the front. Several useful sites for Perl programming on the Web, a selection of which are referenced below in the related sites section.