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Re: Bug in Perl man page



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On 11/25/06 13:54, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:
>> On 11/25/06 00:46, Greg Folkert wrote:
> 
>>> Ron, please stop that urban legend. Perl is Perl not P.E.R.L as you
>>> say.
> 
>>> I have been corrected for saying that, by more than one Perl Monk, also
>>> by Mr. Wall.
> 
>>> Perl is Perl. It has no meaning other than Perl.
> 
>> I guess I'd better file a bug against the perl package then.
> 
>> PERL(1)     Perl Programmers Reference Guide     PERL(1)
> 
>> NAME
>>        perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
> 
> It's a back-formation, as is "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister"
> (later in the man page).  The language is actually named after "Pearl" but
> since there was already a language named that, Larry Wall dropped the "a".
> Since then, a few acronyms were made up to fit the letters.

Does an official-looking top-of-the-man-page backronym that does not
indicate that it is a backronym *become* canonical, simply by reason
that it's at the top of the official man page?

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Is "common sense" really valid?
For example, it is "common sense" to white-power racists that
whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins
are mud people.
However, that "common sense" is obviously wrong.
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