Complete structure Perl considerably occurs from programming language C. Perl is procedural in the nature, with variables, expressions, the assignment statements differentiated skoboy by code blocks, structures of the control and subroutines.



Perl also a beret of feature from bowl programming. All variables are marked with leading characters, which unambiguously identify a data type (a scalar, set, a mash etc.) a variable in a context. Important, characters allow variables to be interpolated directly in sequence. For Perl there are many intrinsic functions, which provide the tools often used in programming of a bowl (though many of these tools are carried out according to programs, external to a bowl) as sorting and call to system services.


Perl takes lists from Lisping, associative sets (mash) from AWK and regular expressions from sed. They simplify and facilitate many parsings, text processing and data processing tasks.


In Perl 5 features have been added as data structure of the complex of support, in the first class of function (that is, closings as values), and the program model oriented to the object. They switch on links, the packages, the sending of a method grounded on a class and lexically scoped variables, along with compiler directives. Ability to pack the code as reuse units was the main additional feature started with Perl 5. Larry Wall has declared later, that "whole intention Perl 5 ' in that the unit system could encourage growth of culture Perl, instead of kernels Perl".



All versions Perl do automatic printing of data and a memory management. The translator knows type and requirements of storage of each data object in the program; it assigns and releases storage for them as required at usage of count of the link (thus it cannot release round data structures without manual intervention).