Re: PERL to mean what 'perldoc perl' says is wrong?

"Stephan Bour" <sbour@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is a certain logic in
rewriting `Practical Extraction and Report Language` as `PERL` which is a
common form of writing a term whose characters each have a documented
meaning, which would appear to be the case.

Sure. Nobody is arguing otherwise.

Unfortunately this argument is not applicable to the name of the
programming language that is discussed in this NG, because the language
was named 'Perl', then afterwards(!) the term 'Practical Extraction and
Report Language' was found as a backcronym, and there is no rule or
established custom that the capitalization of a proper name has to be
changed just because now there is a backcronym available.

If you call your friend Joel 'Jolly Old Excentric Lamer' that doesn't
mean that he has to write his name in all caps, either.

jue
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... It would be an acronym if he came up with 'Practical Extraction and Report Language' *FIRST*, then took the starting letters to make a word. ... Which makes the latter a derivate of the first, making 'Practical Extraction and Report Language' an Acrostic of 'Perl' (instead of Perl being an acronym). ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: Perl Programming within Debian
    ... Practical Extraction and Reporting Language ... Practical Extraction and Report Language ... Perl is Perl, nothing else. ... from the Perl mailing lists. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... "perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language" ... The docs snippet that says those exact words has already ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... %% Practical Extraction and Report Language" ... %% This is, by any definition, an acronym, spelled out in full. ... Report Language' *FIRST*, then took the starting letters to make a word. ... of 'Perl'. ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: perl should be improved and perl6
    ... "concatenate and print files" is not written the same way as "Practical Extraction and Report Language"... ... the former is all lowercase, the latter has capitalized letters, which yield PERL when put together. ... I mean, would it be a stretch to say, "I just wrote a Practical Extraction and Report Language program!" ... But grep is short for "Global Regular Expression Print" so why doesn't it say: ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)