Why is Perl being Popular among Programmers?
Despite being implemented as an interpreted language, Perl is being used by programmers for a variety of purposes. Many writers have even compared Perl to a Swiss army chainsaw due to its powerful, dynamic and easy-to-adapt nature. At present, each developer also has option to choose from Perl 5 and Perl 5. Both versions of the programming languages belong to the same family. But each version of the Perl can be used for entirely different purposes. If you are yet to migrate to Perl, it is a good idea to have a look at some of its most prominent features that make it popular among programmers.
5 Special Features that Make Perl Popular Among Developers
1) Borrows Features from Several Programming Languages
The overall structure and features of Perl resembles that of many other widely used programming languages. For instance, the overall structure of the programming language is broadly derived from C. Likewise; it also borrows features from both Shell and Lisp. Perl supports a number of built-in functions that are used in Shell programming. It also allows programmers to use features like lists, hashes and regular expressions in a manner similar to Lisp programming. The combination of these features makes Perl usable as a high level language from a wide variety of tasks.
2) Supports Complex Data Structure
Along with the object-oriented programming model, Perl also supports complex data structure and several functions. For example, the Perl programmers have option to use references, class-based method dispatch, lexically scoped variables and packages. At the same time, they can further package the code to create the reusable models. The features make it easier for developers to save both time and effort through the enhanced code reusability.
3) Does Data-Typing and Memory-Management Automatically
Often developers have to write additional code for memory-management and data-typing. But the Perl programmers can easily accomplish these tasks by availing the automatic memory-management and data-typing feature of the programming language. For instance, legal-type conversions like converting a number to string can be done automatically at the runtime. Further, the interpreter knows the storage and type requirement of each data object in the program. Thus, it can easily allocate and free memory space using the reference counting, without any manual intervention.
4) Usable for both Scripting and General Purposes
In addition to being a general purpose programming language, Perl is also used widely by developers in scripting context. As the Perl syntax is similar to Java, C++ and C#, it can be used by web developers familiar with these programming languages. Further, Perl enables programmers to accomplish certain tasks in a number of ways. So they are not required to follow any standard way or coding practice to accomplish specific tasks.
5) Comes with Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
The Perl programmers have option to access the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) to avoid writing complex code. CPAN is a centralized and well-maintained repository of a variety of Perl modules. Each Perl module can also be used in a manner similar to C libraries. Thus, the developers can integrate these modules seamlessly in their programs and scripts according to their programming requirements. At the same time, the Perl Regular Expressions make the programming language more effective in manipulating and processing text. The built-in support for text processing further optimizes the performance of Perl as a dynamic scripting language.
As noted earlier, you can choose from Perl 5 and Perl 6. But you must remember that Perl 6 is designed as a completely new language specification without backward compatibility. That is why; you also need to understand the key differences between the two distinct versions of Perl. You can get in touch with a perl web application development companies who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.
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