Editing Portal:Perl History (section)

=== Perl 5 and the CPAN era ===

The most important turning point in Perl history was the release of '''Perl 5''' in 1994. Perl 5 was a major redesign that added references, lexical variables, object-oriented programming support, and a module system. These features made Perl better suited for large programs while preserving its value for short scripts and one-off tools.

In 1995, the '''Comprehensive Perl Archive Network''' ('''CPAN''') came online. CPAN became one of Perl’s greatest strengths: a shared public archive of reusable modules, documentation, and distributions. The CPAN website states that the archive has been online since October 1995 and is constantly growing.<ref>CPAN, “The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,” https://www.cpan.org/, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

CPAN helped establish a culture of shared libraries and reusable code. It also influenced later package ecosystems in other programming languages. Today, CPAN content is commonly searched through '''MetaCPAN''', a modern search engine and discovery site for Perl modules.<ref>MetaCPAN, “Search the CPAN,” https://metacpan.org/, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Perl became closely associated with the growth of the World Wide Web. The language was widely used for CGI scripts, early dynamic websites, log processing, database-driven applications, and Internet infrastructure. Perl also remained important in Unix and Linux system administration, bioinformatics, finance, publishing, testing, and data conversion.