Just another Perl hacker

Just another Perl hacker, or JAPH, typically refers to a Perl program which prints "Just another Perl hacker," (the comma is canonical but is occasionally omitted). Short JAPH programs are often used as signatures in online forums, or as T-shirt designs. The phrase or acronym is also occasionally used (without code) for a signature.

JAPH programs are classically done using extremely obfuscated methods, in the spirit of the Obfuscated C Contest. More recently, as the phenomenon has become so well known, the phrase is sometimes used in ordinary examples (without obfuscation).

The idea of using tiny Perl programs which print a signature as a signature was originated by Randal L. Schwartz, in his postings to the newsgroup comp.lang.perl. Many of the JAPHs below are his.

JAPH program without obfuscation:

Embedding JAPH in opaque code:

Decoding JAPH from a transposed string literal:

Printing out JAPH as separate processes:

Appearing as if it does something completely unrelated to printing JAPH:

Forking processes to print out one letter each in the correct order:

Using only Perl keywords (no literals or punctuation):

Using only punctuation, no alphanumeric characters (written by Eric Roode; only works on Unix and Unix-like systems):

A much shorter one, using only punctuation, based on the EyeDrops module:

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