Non-fiction: Perl 5

Overview
Perl 5, released in 1994 under the direction of Larry Wall, marked a major redesign and maturation of the Perl language that had first appeared in the late 1980s. It introduced a richer set of abstractions and programming conveniences that moved Perl from a powerful scripting glue language toward a more general-purpose programming language suitable for larger projects. The release combined backward compatibility with significant new capabilities, which helped it become the dominant production-line Perl for many years.

Key Innovations
The most important additions were references, a formal module system, true object support, and lexical scoping via the "my" keyword. References enabled complex data structures and flexible data manipulation, while modules provided a standard packaging mechanism that encouraged code reuse and library development. The object system, built on packages and "bless", gave Perl developers a familiar way to organize programs for larger applications. Lexical scoping improved reliability and predictability of variable visibility, making modular code easier to write and maintain.

Language Design and Features
Perl 5 preserved the pragmatic, text-processing strengths of its predecessors while extending expressiveness across many domains. Its context-sensitive evaluation model and powerful regular expression engine were refined, and new features such as tie, overloading, and improved pattern facilities broadened what could be expressed concisely. The XS interface and C API made it straightforward to write performant extensions and bind to system libraries, allowing Perl to be used wherever scripting needed to meet production performance or integrate with native code.

Community and Ecosystem
Perl 5's module system and the growth of CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) created a thriving ecosystem of reusable components that reinforced the language's utility. CPAN centralized thousands of modules covering web programming, database access, text processing, and system administration, lowering the bar for solving common problems. The combination of concise syntax, powerful string/regex tools, and a rich library collection made Perl a favorite for CGI web scripting, automation, and rapid prototyping through the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Impact and Legacy
Perl 5 shaped much of the web and system scripting infrastructure of its era, underpinning CGI scripts, log processing, and many administrative toolchains. Its pragmatic philosophy, captured by the motto "There's more than one way to do it", encouraged flexibility and rapid problem-solving but also led to criticism about readability and maintainability in large codebases. Despite debates and the later development of a separate language lineage (Raku/Perl 6), Perl 5 continued to be maintained and widely used for decades. Its influence persists in scripting idioms, regular-expression features, and design choices in many subsequent languages and tools.