perl: perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) perl: perl: Larry Wall's "Practical Extraction and Report Language". Perl is a perl: language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting perl: information from those text files, and printing reports based on that perl: information. It's also a good language for many system management perl: tasks. The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, perl: efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). perl: perl: perl: