Advanced Perl Programming

Covers advanced features of Perl, how the Perl interpreter works, and presents areas of modern computing technology such as networking, user interfaces, persistence, and code generation.

William "Bo" Rothwell's Advanced Perl Programming continues where his previous book left off, more or less, as it guides you through advanced techniques of the Perl programming language starting with command-line options, references, and arrays and hashes from advanced data types. Next, you'll learn about typeglobs for symbolic entries. Additionally, you'll see advanced subroutine handling, then packages and namespaces. Furthermore, you'll build advanced modules and install CPAN modules. Unlike Java and C++, modules have been around in Perl for a long time now. Along the way, you'll learn and use POD mark up language for Perl documentation. Moreover, you'll get a survey of the many advanced features and data structures of the current Perl programming language. You'll also get a survey of the new features of the latest Perl 5.x release. After reading and using this book, you'll have the tools, techniques, and source code to be an expert Perl programmer. What You Will Learn Carry out command-line parsing and extract scripts Create references; return values from a reference; work with the ref Function and strict refsWork with advanced Perl data types using arrays, hashes, and hash of hashes Use Typeglobs for symbol table entries Build modules and install CPAN modules Write documentation for Perl using POD Work with the newest features in Perl, including the smartmatch operator, yada yada, automated regex modifiers, the CORE namespace and more Who This Book Is For Those with experience with Perl or who have read Rothwell's prior books, Beginning Perl Programming and Pro Perl Programming.

With a worldwide community of users and more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl has proven to be the most effective language for the latest trends in computing and business.Every programmer must keep up with the latest tools and techniques. This updated version of Advanced Perl Programming from O'Reilly gives you the essential knowledge of the modern Perl programmer. Whatever your current level of Perl expertise, this book will help you push your skills to the next level and become a more accomplished programmer.O'Reilly's most high-level Perl tutorial to date, Advanced Perl Programming, Second Edition teaches you all the complex techniques for production-ready Perl programs. This completely updated guide clearly explains concepts such as introspection, overriding built-ins, extending Perl's object-oriented model, and testing your code for greater stability.Other topics include: Complex data structures Parsing Templating toolkits Working with natural language data Unicode Interaction with C and other languages In addition, this guide demystifies once complex topics like object-relational mapping and event-based development-arming you with everything you need to completely upgrade your skills.Praise for the Second Edition:"Sometimes the biggest hurdle to problem solving isn't the subject itself but rather the sheer number of modules Perl provides. Advanced Perl Programming walks you through Perl's TMTOWTDI ("There's More Than One Way To Do It") forest, explaining and comparing the best modules for each task so you can intelligently apply them in a variety of situations." --Rocco Caputo, lead developer of POE"It has been said that sufficiently advanced Perl code is indistinguishable from magic. This book of spells goes a long way to unlocking those secrets. It has the power to transform the most humble programmer into a Perl wizard." --Andy Wardley"The information here isn't theoretical. It presents tools and techniques for solving real problems cleanly and elegantly." --Curtis 'Ovid' Poe" Advanced Perl Programming collects hard-earned knowledge from some of the best programmers in the Perl community, and explains it in a way that even novices can apply immediately." --chromatic, Editor of Perl.com

The sixth edition of this bestselling Perl tutorial includes recent changes to the language. Years of classroom testing and experience helped shape the book's pace and scope, and this edition is packed with exercises that let readers practice the concepts while they follow the text.

Programmers who already have basic to intermediate skills in procedural Perl and understand fundamental concepts of object orientation will get a solid understanding of basic and advanced object-oriented Perl. This book clarifies when, where and why to use Perl. Featuring many techniques and tricks, it presents solutions to common programming problem and explains how to combine Perl and C++.

These are the best and most timeless articles printed in "The Perl Journal." Topics include networking, software development, coding style, internals, and others.

Perl was originally written by Larry Wall while he was working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs. Larry is an Internet legend, known not just for Perl, but as the author of the UNIX utilities rn, one of the original Usenet newsreaders, and patch, a tremendously useful tool that takes a list of differences between two files and allows you to turn one into the other. The term patch used for this activity is now widespread. Perl started life as a “glue” language for Larry and his officemates, allowing one to “stick” different tools together by converting between their various data formats. It pulled together the best features of several languages: the powerful regular expressions from sed (the Unix stream editor), the patte- scanning language awk, and a few other languages and utilities. The syntax was further made up out of C, Pascal, Basic, Unix shell languages, English, and maybe a few other elements along the way. While Perl started its life as glue, it is now more often likened to another handy multiuse tool: duct tape. A common statement heard in cyberspace is that Perl is the duct tape that holds the Internet together.