Perl /perl/ [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] n. An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall <lwall@jpl.nasa.gov>, author of `patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over USENET. Superficially resembles `awk(1)', but is much hairier (see awk). UNIX sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, increasingly consider it one of the {languages ofchoice} . Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of UNIX programming.