<P> Perl 5.001 was released on March 13, 1995 . Perl 5.002 was released on February 29, 1996 with the new prototypes feature . This allowed module authors to make subroutines that behaved like Perl builtins . Perl 5.003 was released June 25, 1996, as a security release . </P> <P> One of the most important events in Perl 5 history took place outside of the language proper and was a consequence of its module support . On October 26, 1995, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) was established as a repository for Perl modules and Perl itself; as of May 2017, it carries over 185,178 modules in 35,190 distributions, written by more than 13,071 authors, and is mirrored worldwide at more than 245 locations . </P> <P> Perl 5.004 was released on May 15, 1997, and included among other things the UNIVERSAL package, giving Perl a base object to which all classes were automatically derived and the ability to require versions of modules . Another significant development was the inclusion of the CGI.pm module, which contributed to Perl's popularity as a CGI scripting language . </P> <P> Perl is also now supported running under Microsoft Windows and several other operating systems . </P>

Perl is a scripting language or programming language