🍺 BREW Explorer

← all formulae

perl

brew install perl v5.42.2 Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later

Interpreter for Perl 5, a general-purpose scripting language with strong text-processing and regex support.

Why you might care

Perl excels at text manipulation, log parsing, and one-liners in shell pipelines; it's battle-tested in sysadmin and DevOps workflows. Many legacy systems and CPAN modules depend on it. Installed via Homebrew as a self-contained runtime separate from macOS's system Perl.

Categories

interpreter language-runtime text-processor

Alternatives

Python Ruby AWK sed
17.4k
30-day installs · #257
61.2k
90-day · #241
215.5k
365-day · #266

Runtime dependencies

gdbm

Links

Caveats

By default non-brewed cpan modules are installed to the Cellar. If you wish
for your modules to persist across updates we recommend using `local::lib`.

You can set that up like this:
  PERL_MM_OPT="INSTALL_BASE=$HOME/perl5" cpan local::lib
And add the following to your shell profile e.g. ~/.profile or ~/.zshrc
  eval "$(perl -I$HOME/perl5/lib/perl5 -Mlocal::lib=$HOME/perl5)"

Blurb generated by claude-haiku-4-5 on today.

Raw metadata 
{
  "aliases": [
    "perl@5.42"
  ],
  "alternatives": [
    "Python",
    "Ruby",
    "AWK",
    "sed"
  ],
  "build_dependencies": [],
  "categories": [
    "interpreter",
    "language-runtime",
    "text-processor"
  ],
  "caveats": "By default non-brewed cpan modules are installed to the Cellar. If you wish\nfor your modules to persist across updates we recommend using `local::lib`.\n\nYou can set that up like this:\n  PERL_MM_OPT=\"INSTALL_BASE=$HOME/perl5\" cpan local::lib\nAnd add the following to your shell profile e.g. ~/.profile or ~/.zshrc\n  eval \"$(perl -I$HOME/perl5/lib/perl5 -Mlocal::lib=$HOME/perl5)\"\n",
  "conflicts_with": [],
  "dependencies": [
    "gdbm"
  ],
  "deprecated": 0,
  "deprecation_reason": null,
  "desc": "Highly capable, feature-rich programming language",
  "disable_reason": null,
  "disabled": 0,
  "enrichment_fetched_at": "2026-06-20T23:40:46+00:00",
  "first_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "full_name": "perl",
  "github_default_branch": null,
  "github_last_commit_at": null,
  "github_readme_excerpt": null,
  "github_repo": null,
  "github_stars": null,
  "github_topics": [],
  "homepage": "https://www.perl.org/",
  "homepage_og_description": null,
  "homepage_og_image": null,
  "homepage_title": "The Perl Programming Language - www.perl.org",
  "installs_30d": 17377,
  "installs_365d": 215478,
  "installs_90d": 61230,
  "keg_only": 0,
  "keg_only_reason": null,
  "last_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "license": "Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later",
  "llm_generated_at": "2026-06-20T23:43:44+00:00",
  "llm_model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
  "name": "perl",
  "oldnames": [],
  "one_liner": "Interpreter for Perl 5, a general-purpose scripting language with strong text-processing and regex support.",
  "optional_dependencies": [],
  "rank_30d": 257,
  "rank_365d": 266,
  "rank_90d": 241,
  "raw_hash": "14a893a93e7747fd",
  "recommended_dependencies": [],
  "revision": 0,
  "ruby_source_path": "Formula/p/perl.rb",
  "tap": "homebrew/core",
  "test_dependencies": [],
  "uses_from_macos": [
    "libxcrypt"
  ],
  "version_head": "HEAD",
  "version_stable": "5.42.2",
  "versioned_formulae": [],
  "why_use_this": "Perl excels at text manipulation, log parsing, and one-liners in shell pipelines; it\u0027s battle-tested in sysadmin and DevOps workflows. Many legacy systems and CPAN modules depend on it. Installed via Homebrew as a self-contained runtime separate from macOS\u0027s system Perl."
}