4. State of Perl

Two types of programmers use Perl. System administrators like it for the way it glues together system commands to manipulate data and processes, and for its pattern-matching functions aids in system searches and reporting. People developing electronic forms for Unix Web servers find Perl easier to learn and use than C, and for their purposes Perl offers more built-in or publicly available functions such as easy data validation and simple databases.

The Perl code in this document works under both Perl 4.x and Perl 5.x. Perl 5 added object-oriented facilities and other conveniences. The Reference Guide identifies with a double-dagger (as in ++) new features of Perl 5.

For major general-purpose Perl applications, particularly CGI scripts and client or server applications, first check the 'Net for Perl modules that you can exploit! See the FAQ "Perl 5 Module List" regularly posted to the Usenet group comp.lang.perl.announce.