最早发布的 Perl 1.0 版是在1987年底出现的,现在已经过去十多年了。下面是 Perl 首席开发者 Larry Wall 对 Perl 发展历程的一个简单回顾: Perl 0 introduced Perl to my officemates. Perl 1 introduced Perl to the world, and changed /\(...\|...\)/ to /(...|...)/. \(Dan Faigin still hasn't forgiven me. :-\) Perl 2 introduced Henry Spencer's regular expression package. Perl 3 introduced the ability to handle binary data (embedded nulls). Perl 4 introduced the first Camel book. Really. We mostly just switched version numbers so the book could refer to 4.000. Perl 5 introduced everything else, including the ability to introduce everything else.
Perl 从诞生到现在(Year 2000),他的主要开发参与者有 10 位,他们分别是:
Larry Wall,
Andy Dougherty,
Tom Christiansen,
Charles Bailey,
Nick Ing-Simmons,
Chip Salzenberg,
Tim Bunce,
Malcolm Beattie,
Gurusamy Sarathy,
Graham Barr.