Perl was developed in 1987 by Larry Wall. Perl Supports object-oriented as well as procedural programming. It is a lot like C and C++. Perl was originally developed for text processing.
Java is one of the widely used programming language. Not only Java is a programming language but also a computing platform. Java was released by Sun Microsystems in 1995 which was initiated by James Gosling. According to Oracle java runs on 3 billion devices worldwide. It is intended to let developers to WRITE ONCE, RUN ANYWHERE, meaning a Java program can be compiled in one platform and executed in any other platform having JVM.
Below are some major differences between Perl and Java
| Feature | Perl | Java |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | “Perl is a general-purpose high-level language popular for CGI scripts. Some of the popular projects in Perl are CPanel and Bugzilla. It was initially designed to replace complex shell scripts. | Java is a programming language and a computing platform. Still there are softwares and websites that won’t work unless you have java installed. It is fast, secure and reliable.” |
| Compiled Format | Perl 6 is specifically compiled to Parrot Bytecode, while Perl 5 and older versions are interpreted language. It is stored with extension .pbc. | Java programs are compiled to bytecode. Java bytecode can be shared through the network and then can be executed on any machine having JVM. It is stored with extension .class. |
| Associative Arrays | Associative Arrays are defined very concisely for Perl. | Java does not have a concise way of creating associative arrays. However it hash implementations. |
| Focus | Common tasks such as file scanning and report generation are accentuately supported by Perl. | Java mostly focuses on application development, software tools, server app, and big data technologies. |
| File Extension | Perl programs are saved with .pl extension. Eg: MyFile.pl |
Java programs are saved with .java extension. Eg: MyFile.java |
| Typed Method | Perl is dynamically typed i.e. most of the type checking is performed during run time. | Java is statically typed i.e. most of its type checking is performed during compile time. |
| Comments and Documentation | Inline comments in Perl are written using # E.g. #Inline-Comment in Perl Documentation in Perl is done using = and =cut. |
Single line comments in Java are declared using // Eg: //Single line Comment . Multiline comments are written using /*……*/ Documentation in Java is done using. Eg: |
| End of Statement | In Perl every statement must end with a semi-colon(;) | In Java every statement must end with a semi-colon(;) |
