Beginning Perl (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

James Lee (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430227931 | ISBN-13: 978-1430227939 | Publication Date: April 14, 2010 | Edition: 3

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.

What you’ll learn

• How to use the power of Perl
• How to handle Perl data structures
• How to build database applications regardless of the underlying database
• How to parse complex data
• How to write industrial-strength object-oriented Perl
• How to start web programming in Perl

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers of all shades and persuasions who thought they could do without Perl. Think again.

Table of Contents

1. First Steps in Perl
2. Scalars
3. Control Flow Constructs
4. Lists and Arrays
5. Hashes
6. Subroutines/Functions
7. Regular Expressions
8. Files and Data
9. String Processing
10. Interfacing to the Operating System
11. References
12. Modules
13. Object-Oriented Perl
14. Introduction to CGI
15. Perl and DBI

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 3 edition (April 14, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430227931
• ISBN-13: 978-1430227939
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My go-to Perl resouce, May 6, 2010

By 

B. Ware (Left Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Perl (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

I use this book all the time, as I did the previous edition. It's the book I turn to for all my Perl questions. Full disclosure: I know the author, but I'm no Perl expert. I qualify as a beginner (esp. since every time I use Perl, it's six months since the last time, and I have to start over).

I emailed him to ask about the Perl 5.10 on the cover and apparently that was something the publisher did without checking with him. He didn't know about it until the book was out and it was too late to do anything about it.

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the beef?, April 13, 2010

By 

Louis Bova - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning Perl (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

I like this book. I really do. But the cover says "Covers Perl 5.10", while there's nothing inside the book about 5.10. There's no "say", no "smart matching", no "switch". Nothing at all that I can identify as new for 5.10. I am very disappointed.