'''Perl''' iswas a [[high-level programming language|high-level]], [[General-purpose programming language|general-purpose]], [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreted]], [[dynamic programming language]]. Perl was originally developed by [[Larry Wall]] in 1987 as a general-purpose [[Unix]] scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular amongst programmers. Larry Wall continues to oversee development of the core language, and its new sister language, [[Perl 6]]. Perl borrows features from other programming languages including [[C (programming language)|C]], [[shell script]]ing ([[Bourne shell|sh]]), [[AWK (programming language)|AWK]], and [[sed]]. The language provides powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary data length limits of many contemporary Unix tools, facilitating easy manipulation of [[text file]]s. Perl gained widespread popularity in the late 1990s as a [[Common Gateway Interface|CGI scripting]] language, in part due to its parsing abilities.<noinclude>
