Perl by Example

The World&;s Easiest Perl 5 Tutorial&;Updated for Today&;s Applications and &;Modern Perl&; Best Practices

&;When I look at my bookshelf, I see eleven books on Perl programming. Perl by Example, Third Edition, isn&;t on the shelf; it sits on my desk, where I use it almost daily. I still think it is the best Perl book on the market for anyone&;beginner or seasoned programmer&;who uses Perl daily.&;

&; Bill Maples, Enterprise Network Support, Fidelity National Information Services

Perl by Example, Fifth Edition, is the proven, easy way to master Perl 5 programming. Legendary Silicon Valley programming instructor Ellie Quigley has fully updated and focused her classic text on today&;s key Perl applications, especially automation, testing, data extraction, and legacy code maintenance. She has also revised this edition to reflect &;modern Perl&; practices that have emerged since Perl 5.10.

Quigley illuminates every technique with focused, classroom-tested code examples. For each example, she shows you code, input, and output, and provides detailed, line-by-line explanations of how the code generates that output. And her coverage is comprehensive, from basic syntax to regular expression handling, files, references, objects, working with databases, and much more&; plus appendices that contain a complete list of functions and definitions, command-line switches, special variables, and popular modules.

New in This Edition

&; Modern Perl approaches to using data types, operators, conditions, subroutines, packages, modules, references, pointers, files, objects, and more

&; Many new examples, covering automation, testing, and data extraction

&; A tutorial on writing object-oriented Perl with the Moose object system

&; An introduction to Dancer, a powerful web application framework designed to replace CGI

&; Updated code examples throughout

More than 50,000 sysadmins, power users, and developers have used this book&;s previous editions to become expert Perl programmers, and you can, too&;even if you&;re completely new to Perl. Then, once you&;re an expert, you&;ll routinely return to this practical guide as the best source for reliable answers, solutions, and code. A more focused, quicker read than ever, this clear and practical guide will take you from your first Perl script to advanced applications. It&;s the only Perl text you&;ll need.

Ellie Quigley has taught scripting in Silicon Valley for more than twenty-five years. Her Perl and shell programming classes at the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension are part of Silicon Valley lore. Her other best-selling Prentice Hall books include UNIX® Shells by Example, Fourth Edition ; PHP and MySQL by Example (with Marko Gargenta); and JavaScript by Example . A major player in developing UCSC&;s Silicon Valley Extension program, she has created and customized courses for pioneering firms, including Xilinx, NetApp, Yahoo, and Juniper.