Larry Arnold Wall was born on September 27, 1954. He is an American computer programmer, linguist, and author. He is known for creating the Perl programming language and the patch tool.

Early life and education

Wall was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Bremerton, Washington. He began his higher education at Seattle Pacific University in 1976, studying chemistry, music, and later pre-medicine. After taking a break for several years to work in the university's computing center, he earned a bachelor's degree in Natural and Artificial Languages.

While attending graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, Wall and his wife studied linguistics. Their goal was to find a language that had no written form, possibly in Africa, and develop a writing system for it. They planned to use this system to translate texts, including the Bible, into the language. However, because of health issues, these plans were not completed. Instead, Wall remained in the United States and joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after finishing graduate school.

Career

Wall is the creator of the rn Usenet client and the commonly used patch program. He won the International Obfuscated C Code Contest twice and received the first Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 1998.

Wall created the Perl language and interpreter while working for System Development Corporation, which later became part of Burroughs and then Unisys. He co-authored Programming Perl, a well-known book for Perl programmers (often called the Camel Book and published by O'Reilly), and edited The Perl Cookbook. Later, he worked full-time for O'Reilly Media to continue developing Perl and write books about it.

Wall's background as a linguist is clear in his books, interviews, and lectures. He frequently compares Perl to a natural language and explains Perl's design choices using ideas from language study. He also uses terms from linguistics to describe Perl features, such as "noun" instead of "variable," "verb" instead of "function," and "topicalizer" instead of "accessor."

Personal life

Wall is an active member of the New Life, Church of the Nazarene. He also works with his local church for Bible Quizzing in the Nor-Cal district.

Wall's Christian faith has influenced some of the terms used in Perl. For example, the name "Perl" comes from a Bible story about the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46). Other examples include the function name "bless" and the way Raku (formerly called Perl 6) design documents are organized. These documents use categories like "apocalypse" and "exegesis."

Wall has mentioned his faith during talks at events, such as the Perl Conference 3.0 on August 23, 1999.