Beginning Perl

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxix

   PDF

2. First Steps in Perl

   Pages 1-12

3. Scalars

   Pages 13-52

4. Control Flow Constructs

   Pages 53-79

5. Lists and Arrays

   Pages 81-114

6. Hashes

   Pages 115-130

7. Subroutines/Functions

   Pages 131-152

8. Regular Expressions

   Pages 153-177

9. Files and Data

   Pages 179-206

10. String Processing

    Pages 207-214

11. Interfacing to the Operating System

    Pages 215-229

12. References

    Pages 231-255

13. Modules

    Pages 257-286

14. Object-Oriented Perl

    Pages 287-315

15. Introduction to CGI

    Pages 317-348

16. Perl and DBI

    Pages 349-386

17. Back Matter

    Pages 387-428

    PDF

This is a book for those of us who believed that we didn’t need to learn Perl, and now we know it is more ubiquitous than ever. Perl is extremely flexible and powerful, and it isn’t afraid of Web 2.0 or the cloud. Originally touted as the duct tape of the Internet, Perl has since evolved into a multipurpose, multiplatform language present absolutely everywhere: heavy-duty web applications, the cloud, systems administration, natural language processing, and financial engineering. Beginning Perl, Third Edition provides valuable insight into Perl’s role regarding all of these tasks and more.

Commencing with a comprehensive overview of language basics, you’ll learn all about important concepts such as Perl’s data types and control flow constructs. This material sets the stage for a discussion of more complex topics, such as writing custom functions, using regular expressions, and file input and output. Next, the book moves on to the advanced topics of object-oriented programming, modules, web programming, and database administration with Perl’s powerful database interface module, DBI. The examples and code provided offer you all of the information you need to start writing your own powerful scripts to solve the problems listed above, and many more.

Whether you are a complete novice or an experienced programmer, Beginning Perl, Third Edition offers an ideal guide to learning Perl.

• Natural
• Perl
• Processing
• Scala
• function
• object
• object-oriented programming
• programming
• regular expressions

James Lee is a hacker and open-source advocate based in Illinois. He holds a master's degree from Northwestern University, and he can often be seen rooting for the Wildcats during football season. As founder of Onsight, Lee has worked as a programmer, trainer, manager, writer, and open-source advocate. Lee coauthored Hacking Linux Exposed, Second Edition, as well as Open Source Web Development with LAMP. He enjoys hacking Perl and has written many articles on Perl for Linux Journal. Lee also enjoys developing software for the Web, reading, traveling and, most of all, playing with his kids, who are too young to know why dad's favorite animals are penguins and camels.

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