Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) is a general-purpose programming language invented in 1987 by Larry Wall. Originally developed for text manipulation, Perl has become extremely popular and is now used for a wide range of tasks, including web development and interface design. Many CGI scripts — programs that generate dynamic web page content such as guestbooks and discussion boards — are written in Perl.

With a Web Hosting or Merchant Solutions plan, you can write your own Perl scripts. A strong community of Perl developers has also made available hundreds of free scripts that you can use to add functionality to your site.

We recommend becoming familiar with Perl before enabling Perl in any of your web pages.

To learn more about Perl, visit the Perl.com web site, purchase a book about Perl, or review other Perl resources.