How should I capitalize Perl? [closed]

Answer 1

While, as has been said, it doesn't make THAT much difference if you get it wrong, some folks do use correct capitalization (or at least, NOT referring to 'PERL' or any of the more sensible backcronyms) as a shibboleth for clue in job ads. :)

Answer 2

Here's the answer from perlfaq1:

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 is not an acronym, apocryphal folklore and post-facto expansions notwithstanding.

Answer 3

Despite a lot of anecdote to the contrary, "PERL" was never really an acronym -- it's a "backronym". The name Perl was chosen first, then some people jokingly applied expansions to it, which caught on.

The PerlMonks community (highly recommended!) taught me the convention, and it's similar to Java's:

• It's never PERL (or JAVA)
• When you're talking about the language, it's Perl (or Java)
• When you're talking about the interpreter itself, it's perl (or java).

That said, it doesn't make a whole hill of beans if you do it "wrong".