Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. The languages in this family include Perl 5 and Perl 6. 

Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions. Perl 6, which began as a redesign of Perl 5 in 2000, eventually evolved into a separate language. Both languages continue to be developed independently by different development teams and liberally borrow ideas from one another. 

The Perl languages borrow features from other programming languages including C, shell script (sh), AWK, and sed. They provide powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary data-length limits of many contemporary Unix commandline tools, facilitating easy manipulation of text files. Perl 5 gained widespread popularity in the late 1990s as a CGI scripting language, in part due to its then unsurpassed regular expression and string parsing abilities. 

In addition to CGI, Perl 5 is used for system administration, network programming, finance, bioinformatics, and other applications, such as for GUIs. It has been nicknamed "the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages" because of its flexibility and power, and also its ugliness. In 1998, it was also referred to as the "duct tape that holds the Internet together", in reference to both its ubiquitous use as a glue language and its perceived inelegance.
What is the duct tape that holds the Internet together? When? What's its nickname? Is this a low-level language? What type of family is it? Of what? Which languages are included? What is an unofficial acronym? Who wrote it? When? What was it's original purpose? Was anything borrowed from other languages? What? How did the sixth version begin? Are they the same language? When did 5 become popular? As what? Why? Does it work with GUI? What other apps?
Perl In 1998, it was also referred to as the "duct tape that holds the Internet together" "the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages no high-level family dynamic programming languages Perl 5 and Perl 6. "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" Larry Wall in 1987 to make report processing easier yes they liberally borrow ideas from one another. as a redesign of Perl 5 no the late 1990s as a CGI scripting language because of its then unsurpassed regular expression and string parsing abilities yes network programming, finance, bioinformatics