When I saw that Matt was using Python to code it, of course I wanted to try it in Perl instead!

This was what I came up with:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw( say );
use Function::Parameters;

$| = 1;

# Try the record-holder
try_num(277777788888899, 1);

# Search for record holders at each # iterations
my $num = my $max = my $maxn = my $print = 0;
while (1) {
    ++$num;
    my ($per, $new) = (persist($num), 0);
    (0 == $num % 100_000) and $print = 1;
    ($per > $max) and ($maxn, $max, $print, $new) = ($num, $per, 1, 1)
+;
    $print and print " CURR=$num,  MAX=$max,  MAXP=$maxn\e[K\r";
    $new and say "";
    $print = $new;
}



fun try_num($num, $dbg = 0) {
    my $per = persist($num, $dbg);
    printf "\e[102m Count[$num] = %s\e[m\n\n", persist($num, $dbg);
}

fun muldigs($num, $dbg = 0, $res = 1) {
    $dbg and say " Num: $num";
    my @dbg = ( );
    map { push @dbg, ($res *= $_) } split(//, $num);
    $dbg and say "   -> " . join(",", @dbg);
    return $res;
}

fun persist($num, $dbg = 0) {
    my ($mul, $iter) = ($num, 0);
    while (1) {
        (length($mul) > 1) or return $iter;
        ($iter, $mul) = ($iter+1, muldigs($mul, $dbg));
        $dbg and say "Iter: $iter [$mul]\n";
    }
}
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