Perl is a high-level, general-purpose programming language known for its flexibility, powerful text processing capabilities, and support for multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. It is often used for system administration, web development, network programming, and bioinformatics.

Context refers to the environment in which an expression is evaluated, which affects how it behaves. Perl has two primary contexts: Scalar context: Returns a single value (e.g., when assigning to a scalar variable). List context: Returns a list of values (e.g., when assigning to an array).