Description:

PersistentPerl is a way to run perl scripts persistently, which
can make them run much more quickly. A script can be made to to
run persistently by changing the interpreter line at the top of
the script from:

"#!/usr/bin/perl"

to

"#!/usr/bin/perperl"

After the script is initially run, instead of exiting, the perl
interpreter is kept running. During subsequent runs, this
interpreter is used to handle new executions instead of starting a
new perl interpreter each time. A very fast frontend program,
written in C, is executed for each request. This fast frontend
then contacts the persistent Perl process, which is usually
already running, to do the work and return the results.

By default each perl script runs in its own Unix process, so one
perl script can't interfere with another. Command line options
can also be used to deal with programs that have memory leaks or
other problems that might keep them from otherwise running
persistently.

PersistentPerl can be used to speed up perl CGI scripts. It
conforms to the CGI specification, and does not run perl code
inside the web server. Since the perl interpreter runs outside
the web server, it can't cause problems for the web server itself.

PersistentPerl also provides an Apache module so that under the
Apache web server, scripts can be run without the overhead of
doing a fork/exec for each request. With this module a small
amount of frontend code is run within the web server - the perl
interpreters still run outside the server.

SpeedyCGI and PersistentPerl are currently both names for the same
code. SpeedyCGI was the original name, but because people weren't
sure what it did, the name PersistentPerl was picked as an alias.
At some point SpeedyCGI will probably be replaced by
PersistentPerl, or become a sub-class of PersistentPerl to avoid
always having two distributions.