[WEB4LIB] Re: Top 5 PERL Wiki Engines?

[Rich Ackerman]

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:00:22 -0700 (PDT), K.G. Schneider 
<kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote:

>> > And, GERRY!!1!, wiki is spelled wiki in lower case.
>>
>> So is perl.
>>
>> Rich Ackerman
>
> Er, no, a quick check (in Google, I searched with define: perl) reveals 
> it is "Perl,"  a proper noun derived from an acronym (Practical 
> Extraction and Research Language).
>
> Then again, perhaps it should be lower case, along with email, web, etc.

Er, no, it could be "Perl" or it could be "perl" but it certainly isn't 
PERL, as Gerry said, and it wasn't derived as an acronym for "Practical 
Extraction and Research Language" either.

The FAQ ( http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlfaq1.html ) says that the 
author of the language now uses two spellings, one for the language 
("Perl") and one for the interpreter ("perl"). However, it also says that 
either spelling is correct for either usage, depending on context. Since 
much of perl acts that way, it's sort of an inside joke. (Most of perl 
culture consists of a big inside joke.) From the FAQ:

"What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?

"One bit. Oh, you weren't talking ASCII? :-) Larry now uses "Perl" to 
signify the language proper and "perl" the implementation of it, i.e. the 
current interpreter. Hence Tom's quip that "Nothing but perl can parse 
Perl." You may or may not choose to follow this usage. For example, 
parallelism means "awk and perl" and "Python and Perl" look OK, while "awk 
and Perl" and "Python and perl" do not. But never write "PERL", because 
perl isn't really an acronym, apocryphal folklore and post-facto 
expansions notwithstanding."

Thus "perl wiki" is more perlish than "Perl wiki" (by the perl FAQ rule of 
parallelism.)

The "Larry" is Larry Wall, who wrote perl (the interpreter) and invented 
Perl (the language). "Tom" is Tom Christiansen, co-author of the 2nd 
edition of "Programming Perl." It's interesting to note that the title of 
the first edition of that book is "Programming perl" - they changed the 
case of the word in the title of the second edition. Also interesting is 
the preface which states perl is the "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish 
Lister."

Best wishes,

Rich