perl on hp-ux 11i (PA-RISC) and hp-ux 11i (IPF)

As the most popular web programming language due to its facility with text manipulation and rapid development cycle, Perl is a high-level programming language created and enhanced by the Open Source community. Perl takes the best features from other languages, such as C, awk, sed, sh, and BASIC, among others and at least a dozen other tools and languages. Perl's process, file, and text manipulation facilities make it particularly well-suited for tasks involving quick prototyping, system utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access, graphical programming, networking, and world wide web programming. These strengths make it especially popular with system administrators and CGI script authors.

HP OpenSource Perl  is built using HP C/C++ Compilers. 32-bit and 64-bit perl can be installed independently with the default being 32-bit.

HP OpenSource Perl is optimized for HP-UX 11i PA-RISC and HP-UX 11i Itanium Processor Family (IPF) platforms. The perl bundle revision E.5.8.8.D or later versions are available as HP OpenSource Perl.

HP OpenSource Perl is based on OpenSource Perl similar to the previously delivered ActivePerl.

Flexibility

• Perl works with third-party databases like Oracle, Sybase, Postgres, and many others through the abstract database interface called DBI.

• Perl can work with HTML, XML, and other mark-up languages.

• Perl has Unicode support.

• Perl supports both procedural and object-oriented programming.

• Perl can interface with external C/C++ libraries through XS or SWIG.

• Perl is developed by the perl5porters, or p5p for short. Perl 5 is extensible and there are over 400 third party modules available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.

• perl (the interpreter of Perl) can be embedded into other systems.

• Perl's CGI.pm module makes handling HTML forms easy.

• CGI.pm is part of Perl's standard distribution.

• Perl can handle encrypted Web transactions, including e-commerce situations.

• Perl can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as much as 2000%.

• The Apache web server can use mod_perl to embed a Perl interpreter

• Using Perl's DBI package, such as web-database integration, is easy.

Multi-task

• Perl is flexible and extensible enough for you to use on virtually any task, from one-line file-processing tasks to large, elaborate systems.

• For many people, Perl serves as a great replacement for shell scripting. For others, it serves as a convenient, high-level replacement for most of what they'd program in low-level languages like C or C++.

• If you have a library that provides an API, you can make any component of it available as just another Perl function or variable using a Perl extension written in C or C++ and dynamically linked into your main perl interpreter.

• You can also go the other direction, and write your main program in C or C++, and then link in some Perl code on the fly, to create a powerful application.

Since Perl has an open distribution policy, the Open Source community and its many users support Perl through forums and newsgroups. In addition, HP offers support services for OpenSource Perl delivered by HP for mission-critical and enterprise customers.