Perl: /perl/ [Practical Extraction and Report Language,

: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 of
choice}. Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark
about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of UNIX
programming.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary