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Re^6: PERL as shibboleth and the Perl community

by merlyn (Sage)
on Nov 25, 2005 at 17:02 UTC ( [id://511709]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^5: PERL as shibboleth and the Perl community
in thread PERL as shibboleth and the Perl community

It's in this sense that I say it's an acronym. Could you enlighten me how that's wrong?
Perl is a Backronym. In fact, it's even listed in the List of backronyms.

However, even if it was merely an acronym, the official spelling is still not capitalized—any more than "rom", "ram", "smog", "radar", "laser", "sonar", or "scuba" are capitalized now (which are all arguably acronyms, not backronyms).

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

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Re^7: PERL as shibboleth and the Perl community
by TimToady (Parson) on Nov 25, 2005 at 17:47 UTC
    More than just being a single backronym, in adding its second gloss "perl" was intentionally turned into a backronym generator. It would be interesting linguistically to categorize backronyms into those that are productive and those that are fossilized. Certainly "perl" is still productive: "Polymorphic Existential Recursive Lambdas" is just the lastest one.
      Is there a list somewhere online of these? Adding a few more off of the top of my head:

      Perl's an Extremely Reliable Language
      People Earn Respect Lazily
      Perfection Enters Real Life
      Programmers Everywhere Relish Leisure

      And so on..

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