Distinctive features
This is an interpreted language. It is loosely typed.
It is very good at text processing.
Richness of syntax
It is very rich, so that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same thing; to the point where code written by one programmer may be unintelligible to another.
Running, building
Running
See perlrun on the internet. Commands to be interpreted are either entered in a special shell, or is passed in a file to the interpreter, or is passed in the command line.
Getting help
Use perldoc, perlsyn. Inbuilt function reference: perlfunc.
Modules
Install: cpan Chocolate::Belgian
Define
Begin:
package Some::Module; # assumes Some/Module.pm
BEGIN {
require Exporter;
our $VERSION = 1.00;
# Inherit from Exporter - necessary.
our @ISA = qw(Exporter);
our @EXPORT = qw(func1 func2);
# Optional export
our @EXPORT_OK = qw($Var1 %Hashit func3); }
End:
END { ... } #cleanup
1;