Re: To Perl or not to PERL.

[thundergnat]

I suspect that a large contributor to the PERL|Perl|perl confusion is the Activestate HTML documentation. They chose to apply a small-caps style to the h1 elements so every page heading shows up as caps. Like this: (ooooo! simulated small-caps!)

PERL - PRACTICAL EXTRACTION AND REPORT LANGUAGE

Rather than this:

perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

Sure it is small caps not caps, but the distinction is subtle, and beginners are not likely to pick up on it or know the difference. When the "official" documentation displays it in all caps and they get smacked down for doing the same thing here, I'm sure there is some feeling of "WTF is up with those pompous, self-absorbed jerks?..." I'm not going to try to defend this as THE cause, but it is likely a fairly large influence. Activestate is a major perl distribution, especially in the Windows world.